The first time I ever attended Columbus Pride was in 2011, when I was an intern with my sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma. My roommate/co-intern/best friend Libbi and I marched with a bunch of pro-LGBTQ+ churches! Last summer, Dan and I skipped the parade, but we explored the Pride Festival. This summer, I had a reason besides equality to attend Columbus Pride: George Takei was the parade’s grand marshal. Yes, THE George Takei from Star Trek.
Columbus Pride Breakfast
Since Dan was at the track (again) the weekend of June 21st, I spent the entire weekend in Columbus, mostly with Libbi and Henry. Our friend Ericka invited us to a Pride breakfast hosted by her boyfriend Nihar. We feasted on fancy cheese, decadent pastries, rainbow cookies, and delicious mimosas in colorful champagne flutes.
George Takei at the Columbus Pride Parade
My challenge for the day was to somehow see George Takei at the beginning of the parade and still be on time to volunteer at the festival at noon. As my friends and I watched the parade, I started to worry it wouldn’t happen. I had also volunteered my friend Angela. A few minutes before noon, we started walking down the sidewalk on High Street to get closer to our meeting spot to volunteer, with hopes of seeing George Takei. Construction obstructed the view of part of the sidewalk. Angela wisely noted that it would suck to be stuck in that section and miss George Takei… And of course we ended up stuck behind a parent and two small kids walking very slowly. As we emerged from the construction tunnel, whose float was passing by?
The moment might have been brief, and my pictures might be really bad, but I floated the rest of the day. It was SO exciting to see George Takei at Columbus Pride, even for just a few minutes.
Why Marriage Matters at the Columbus Pride Festival
Angela and I spent about two hours volunteering at the booth for Why Marriage Matters, a grassroots campaign to gather support for marriage equality in Ohio. The campaign is still in its early stages, so our primary objective was to collect pledges from those who support marriage equality (aka build a mailing list). This was a fairly easy goal at Columbus Pride since most people there support marriage equality. The best part of volunteering was the chance to meet so many same-sex couples and to hear their stories. We met couples who had been married (just not legally recognized as such in Ohio) for longer than 30 years! Meeting all of these couples who started their relationships in a more turbulent and oppressive time was so inspiring. These people have risked so much for love. It breaks my heart that the state of Ohio won’t recognize a same-sex couple who has been together longer than I’ve been alive, but they’ll recognize my marriage of just a few months.
I look forward to the day when any two consenting adults can be legally married in all 50 states. Until then, I will continue to advocate for marriage equality.
Oh yes, marriage definitely matters: because God says it does.
“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother, and cleave unto his wife, and the two shall become one flesh– this mystery is profound, and I al speaking of Christ and the Church.”
“Moses allowed you to divorce because of the hardness of your heart, but from the beginning it was not so: a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave only to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no man separate.”
Marriage is about God working– joining people in a holy mysterious way, so that they become so tightly bound that you cannot tell where one ends & one begins– it’s a totally new being created. (we see this happen in a very touch-and-feel it way when children are born of this God-ordained physical AND spiritual union).
Marriage is about the Gospel being portrayed to a watching world (yes, even among non-Christians!). God -like every good author- put the seeds to the triumphant ending in the very first chapter. He foreshadowed and hinted and invented an allegory for how He intended to ultimately relate to His people (for all eternity!) … at the very beginning. He created male & female, distinct & equally vital, and made them need each other and fit for each other. Then He invented “marriage,” where they would be bound together for the rest of their lives…
Why? So society would work & propogate and humanity would fill the earth? Well, yes, it does fulfill all those nitty-gritty logistical needs. But that’s not the main thing. All along, it was meant to give us a category for how God relates to His people– first, God relating to Israel, being faithful despite their (“her”) unfaithfulness. This is so beautifully & graphically portrayed in Hosea and Ezekiel. And then, Jesus comes on the scene and buys His Bride back from where she’d sold herself, with His own blood, and He chooses to need her to be His Hands & Feet in the world. He directs, she follows & fulfills. He sacrifices Himself, cherishes, protects, defends. She honors, advances, fights alongside, nurtures & grows (disciples).
It’s not about us & our human loves, ultimately.
It’s about His.
And that’s why He gets to define marriage and sex and love– we don’t get that privilege.
One day all marriages will be done– we are neither married nor given in marriage in Heaven, Jesus tells us. Except One: the Lamb will bring His Bride home forever into the Home He’a been building for Her, and the wedding feast will feed all the nations, and the party will last forever! I can’t wait to be a part of that!!
The US government has already redefined marriage to be a contract between two consenting adults who then get thousands of government rights and benefits. Very few people are asking individual churches or Christians to redefine their understanding of marriage. We’re asking the government to disallow legal discrimination against same-sex couples, which is the current effect of banning a particular contract that comes with so many legal rights and benefits.
While I look forward to having kids one day, eventually, not now, if anyone else is reading this seriously stop asking us when we’re having kids we literally just got married, I think we do disservice to childless Christian marriages by including that as a vital part of marriage. I’m reading Jesus Feminist by Sarah Bessey right now, and she has a beautiful chapter on her own marriage. While she has children now, she also suffered from miscarriages. She writes about listening to sermons about motherhood being true womanhood, and feeling completely inadequate. She ends the chapter with this: “If all we ever accomplish with our marriages is the loving of each other down through the years, that’s enough, and it’s a real marriage.”
And I meant to add this (posting from my phone & editing/proof-reading is really difficult)–
We understand God’s unbelievable, intense, would-do-anything, love for us because we have seen the way a man falls head over heels for a woman, and then goes to at times ridiculous lengths to win her affection… If God hadn’t compared His love to courtship it would seem irreverent & blasphemous to say He loves us like that, when He is so HOLY, and we are so NOT! yet He does. He is jealous for our love; He wants it all, just as He gives it all– just as couples who love each other with all their hearts do.