GAY IN THE EYES OF GOD

By WILFRID SHEED

If there really were a wall between church and state in America, marriage would be Checkpoint Charlie, the one the spies and diplomats keep pouring through. So intense is their common interest in the subject that the two sides have to keep an eye on each other because each immediately affects the air the other breathes. If, just to take this year's crisis, either side should start to allow same-sex marriages, the air over both of them would instantly seem fresher to some citizens and quite poisonous to others. Perhaps there should be talks.

Fortunately both sides do seem to speak almost the same language on certain critical issues. Simply because it bounces off so many people, marriage is the most political of sacraments, which means that it has to be made to work in the here and now as well the there and then. It has to play in Peoria, if only for the sake of the children, and the clergy has to think like politicians, even while the politicians are talking about love.

So if they were to hold talks, filled with the usual goodwill and cultural misunderstandings, they might actually agree for several precious minutes before someone or other stormed out, to wit and as follows: if gay marriages seem to weaken the institution of marriage as a whole, that's bad. But if they give gays a recognized place in society, that's probably good. You can't very well accuse gays of acting promiscuously in bathhouses if you won't offer them anyplace else to go.

And besides--adds the politician behind his hand--civic marriage has already been watered down to meet every conceivable request. You don't have to stay together five minutes longer than you want to these days, and certainly nobody is asking you to have children. To be turned down by such a club must be quite galling.

But of course religious marriage still is about children and permanence, so for believers the debate has to move on to those issues, although this is far from the end of it. In fact, such gays as already consider themselves married seem to value permanence so highly that one can imagine a day when they are the only ones left who still want to get married the old-fashioned way.

But all this will have to wait until the church has finally worked out what it thinks about homosexuality. Until recently, homosexuality was considered largely voluntary, a series of perverse choices by a free will. But as it becomes likelier that homosexuality is a physical predisposition, presumably God-given, the next kind of question has to be, What might God have had in mind, and is it significant that Christ never mentioned the subject? And the question after that: What injustices may have been done to homosexuals under the old understanding, and what can be done to avoid more of them?

None of which means gay marriages are inevitable, only that something is. The running argument between what feels Christian and what the church currently practices actually seems to be approaching climaxes on several fronts at once right now, as the roles of priest and citizen and married couple all struggle to be reborn in harmony. But this time gays will undoubtedly be part of the equation and, if all goes well, part of the harmony.

Wilfrid Sheed is an author and critic.