On Tuesday, June 29, the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act .
On Wednesday, June 30, the Supreme Court found DOMA unconstitutional and ruled that the defenders of Proposition 8 lacked legal standing, thereby clearing the way for same-sex marriages to resume in the state of California (see http://documents.latimes.com/supreme-court-decisions/).
On Friday morning of this same week, my wife and I, and our three kids, ages 16, 13 and 10, set out in our minivan from our home in east Texas for Pennsylvania. We told our kids it was a family road trip. We intended it to be part college tour (our oldest is a rising junior) and part family vacation.
On Friday afternoon, we saw the Edmund Pettus Bridge–the bridge on U.S. Route 80 that spans the Alabama River in Selma, Alabama–and told our kids about Bloody Sunday, when armed police attacked a group of peaceful civil rights demonstrators in 1965 during the civil rights movement. On Sunday morning, we were in the pews at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, GA where Martin Luther King, Jr. co-pastored with his father.
We went to Ebenezer because we happened to be in Atlanta, and because it’s a national historic site. We decided to attend early morning services because, well, it was Sunday, and we figured we’d have the rest of the day to be tourists.
Both Heather and I were raised Mormon, so we’re familiar with the spiritual-experience-equals-truth approach to religion. Judged by that standard, the Ebenezer Baptist Church is “true.” The Reverend Raphael Gamaliel Warnock, senior pastor, gave a sermon entitled “Your Kingdom Come. Your Will Be Done.” He referenced the Voting Rights Act, explained the significance of Tuesday’s Supreme Court ruling, and talked about the long struggle of the black community for equal protection under the law. He talked about social justice. And then he had this to say about marriage equality:
Ebenezer Baptist Church – Marriage Equality (Clip, June 30, 2013)
The Ebenezer Baptist Church won’t be performing gay marriages anytime soon, and that’s okay, because whether or not they actuallly perform gay marriages, they’re planted firmly on the right side of this debate. I couldn’t help but compare what we heard sitting in those pews to what we’ve heard lately from our Mormon leaders. How long will it be before our leaders get it?
Phenomenal speech. Beautiful… and nothing like the sermon I heard on Sunday. The way you teach your kids about history and love rocks!