Remember Gene Robinson? Only a few years ago, he scandalized many by becoming the first openly homosexual Episcopal bishop, and then by marrying his partner.
Welp. Now he’s getting divorced. You can read about it here. He’s sixty-six years old, but apparently the acrimony is too great to continue with the 25-year relationship. Although he wouldn’t say so.
Here’s what he did have to say:
“As you can imagine, this is a difficult time for us — not a decision entered into lightly or without much counseling,” Robinson wrote in a letter. “We ask for your prayers, that the love and care for each other that has characterized our relationship for a quarter century will continue in the difficult days ahead.”
“It is at least a small comfort to me, as a gay rights and marriage equality advocate, to know that like any marriage, gay and lesbian couples are subject to the same complications and hardships that afflict marriages between heterosexual couples.”
Mr. Robinson continued in this vein of acting like a responsible adult. As we all know, in this day and age we’re all French: we pretend to be blase about our lover’s lover and about our bitter divorce. It’s grown-up to be cool about divorce. Be cool, Gene.
“My belief in marriage is undiminished by the reality of divorcing someone I have loved for a very long time, and will continue to love even as we separate,” Robinson wrote in his column. “Love can endure, even if a marriage cannot.”
Love can endure, even if a marriage cannot. Right. I keep forgetting that love is a feeling, not an action.
It’s not like divorce could by definition mean someone’s not loving someone. That’d be ridiculous.
But that’s not the point here anyway. The reason I’m sharing this is to say that Mr. Robinson is right. Just like any marriage, gay and lesbian couples are subjected to the same complications and hardships that afflict marriages between heterosexual couples.
This is not Mr. Robinson’s first divorce. He divorced his wife in 1986. He did so “amicably”, for no other reason than that he could no longer be married. And that was fine. He divorced for no sound biblical reason, and was not defrocked.
Remember when you and I told the homosexual community that marriage was sacred? And then we went and got divorced like everyone else did? That’s what made this okay. We declared marriage profane well before anyone started trying to say that marriage could be something besides what it obviously is.
One thing marriage obviously isn’t is unholy. Or convenient. Or bitter. Or selfish. Or temporary.
Once we said it was those things, we were the ones who changed the definition of marriage.
Originally published at Joffre The Giant.<>
Cheese – I like cheese with a fondness that has far outlived any interest that I may have once had in chasing balls. I remember walking down the street with my grandmother and ordering grilled cheese sandwiches at a diner that is no longer there. Cheese toast was her breakfast specialty. Cheese and crackers for an afternoon snack. Meager selections perhaps, but necessities from the days when parents wanted only to get calories into children whom they thought too skinny, who pediatricians thought were too fat. These days, I have the opportunity to sample respectable cheese just often enough that it remains a luxury and maintains it’s place in my heart – and perhaps in my arteries. I digress.
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