SUNDAY SERMON- Proposition 8 and the Unitarian Universalists: “To Whom It May Concern” is on Our Side

[We here at Johnny California are honored that noted philosopher-educator-attorney-musician, Silo Dogood contributed the inaugural post in our Sunday Sermon series. Thank you Silo.  Take it away...]

“Who do Unitarians pray to?” goes the old joke.“To Whom it may concern.”

Just who is this Whom has been a question I’ve pondered for some time, and a recent video message from Tony Perkins of the theocratic Family Research Council warning of the dangers of same-sex marriage has me musing about the nature of The Deity once again.

And, no, it is surprisingly not the same Tony Perkins we know and love from Psycho. This is the real deal. But you are free to imagine those scary staccato strings playing over this video for suitable effect as he delivers his dire warning that if Proposition 8 fails here in California, thus affirming the legality of same-sex marriage, then the Vast Gay Conspiracy will corrupt our kids in schools everywhere.

The video was sent to me by a close family member who is an otherwise warm, funny, and affectionate woman I’ve known all my life, but also deeply conservative and, apparently, fundamentalist Christian. It is one of life’s ironies, made more poignant since a scant few days after receiving this video in my email, I had the chance to hear a different kind of churchy message that was, as we say in the law world, directly on point. The second message I heard was one that warned of the dangers of Proposition 8, on the ballot next week in California. This message came from the stage of the Unitarian church, my new religion of choice.

Please note that when I say “Unitarian,” I am referring to the Unitarian Universalists, or as they economically and officially call themselves, the UUs. But before I continue, I really have to address the name. Unitarian Universalism. Couldn’t they have picked a less cumbersome name? And the trouble with the shortened “UU” brand is that it seems so consumerist to identify oneself as an acronym. You can’t even buy “Kentucky Fried Chicken” as a “Unitarian” anymore, for chrissakes. Therefore, despite my lowercase universalist spiritual tendencies, from here on out I will refer to myself as a Unitarian, not a UU. This may become confusing when talking to other…er…UUs. I will use “Unitarian” and “UU” interchangeably when discussing the denomination itself.

For now, a little backstory may help explain my presence in the UU church a few weeks ago, though I will return to the subject of Prop 8 by blog post’s end. This other part of the story begins in 2001, when a gay friend of ours brought my wife and me as guests to our local Unitarian Universalist church. Since then, I’ve been a churchgoer.

Well, that’s not exactly true or even close to accurate. A handful of times, I’ve visited some religious institution, be it a UU church, a silent Quaker meeting, a zendo, or even the Episcopal Church. Nothing fully satisfied me, though. The rub is that being irreligious did not satisfy, either.

My inner spiritual compass, if you will, guides me back-and-forth from agnostic humanism on one hand to a kind of “vital deism” on the other (borrowing loosely from Miguel de Unamuno) with an American Zen floating somewhere in between. (Oh, Jeez, now I sound like one of them.) Religion, really, is not an enemy of mine. A line from a recording of Alan Watts has helped me reconcile this tenacious religious impulse with my often kneejerk irreverence. “Once you realize you don’t need religion,” he said, “it becomes fun to have one.”

So, I’ve recently made more of a determination (I hesitate to call it a commitment) to go back to the Unitarian church more regularly, since they wouldn’t wince at my agnosticism or deism or Buddhism. And we have a kid now. A community of liberal-minded quasi-Buddhists and humanists seems like a good, moral community for her. So, hi ho, it’s off to church we go.

Going “back to church” in this context means embracing a religion that, since its 1961 incorporation as a melding of the Unitarian and Universalist denominations, has always been involved in righteous political frays, particularly in the case of civil rights in the 1960s. The cause celebre of Unitarianism these days, and for many years now, has been equality and welcoming for LGBT people. That is just fine with me, which is fortunate, because with Proposition 8 on the California ballot, the UUs have had a lot to openly pray, no, think and speak about.

There is a point in the Unitarian service when the children come forward to the stage to hear a children’s story before being led to their Sunday School. On this particular Sunday, the storyteller told them about a king who had issued a series of ridiculous decrees that annoyed the people. Just as my mind wandered to how this story might appeal to the libertarian in all of us, I heard the storyteller refer to a character’s “two mommies.” She went on from there to the story’s happy ending, which I can’t quite remember. At that point I was stunned, despite myself, to hear Tony Perkins’s greatest fear enunciated so precisely and thoroughly. And this was not even in a school. It was in a church, a holy sanctuary, a House of Whom.

At first, I actually cringed. I am always bothered when I think that an adult is trying to muscle kids into any political position that the adult thinks is right. After a few seconds, however, I realized that this woman was not trying to muscle my daughter into anything and I relaxed.

There very well could have been same-sex parental couples in the congregation. There was no call for the kids to carry around “No on Prop 8” signs. Rather than an exercise in indoctrination, this story was a light-handed acculturation to tolerance. That has spiritual significance, even if no one invoked The Deity.

Would my family member who sent the video see such significance, other than seeing it as ersatz pornography masquerading as moral education? Probably not. Strike that. Hell no! At some point in these kids’ lives, however, they are likely to encounter someone who was raised by a married or unmarried same-sex couple. And, Mr. Perkins, teachers can tell kids about same-sex parents with or without the “one man, one woman” language inserted into California’s already tome-like constitution.

The UU children’s story gave me hope that if Prop 8 passes, the ferment of tolerance will just keep spreading regardless. Defeating Prop 8, however, may not be as good as getting the state out of the marriage business all together (civil unions for all), but it would be a giant step toward creating the civil society that, I faithfully submit, is what Whom always intended.