It’s easy to mourn from a distance. It’s easy to be infuriated. It’s not my tradition. It’s not my rights, either to marry or to perform a ceremony that are being abrogated. I am not married because some of you cannot marry, but that was an easy gesture for Steve and me to make; we had no compelling need to marry.

But I’m far sadder than I thought I’d be, both because of the hatefulness and the willingness to allow hate to overshadow their very real responsibilities to Love.

I believe in church. I always have. It is where I have found meaning. It’s true that the meaning I have sought and found has changed over the years. I’m very happy being a Unitarian Universalist for all so many reasons. (you know spell check really should learn to recognize Universalism as a religion and stop telling me I’m wrong!)

But this is where I have immigrated, it isn’t where I was raised. That was sweet and wonderful time for me that eventually didn’t hold the meaning I needed. We held my sister’s memorial in the church we grew up in, and it was clear that that may not have been the best choice theologically, although it was an emotional tie. Too long gone. And way too much theological distance between us.

My early tradition taught me to choose Love. And when I did. When I realized that I would have to grow or lose the friends who were discovering or uncovering their sexuality, I chose Love. This may have been my first step into adulthood (the first step out of Eden?). I danced in and out of that garden gate for a while and eventually left.

And now it seems barbaric to waste time, energy and resources fighting about people’s Love (a pastor’s for his congregation, a father’s for his son, a son’s for his husband) and not about real injustice. Jesus never enjoined folk to hate. “Do you love me, feed my children.”

This year more Americans are going to go hungry. It seems people who style themselves as religious ought to be worrying about that.

I’m sorry for my clergy friends in other traditions who are living with these limitations. I pray for your finding your way forward. I’m sorrier for the differently-loving that you are told, over and over again, that your Love is not worthy. Those who tell you that are flat wrong. My prayers are with you all.

And I’m really, really sorry, that too many of today’s mainline churches would rather pick nits than do justice… and in the name of nit-picking commit sad and sorry injustice.