Supreme Cowardice

A statement from Rev. Michael Piazza, Senior Pastor of Virginia-Highland Church, about today's Supreme Court rulings on same-gender marriage.

While today’s decision declaring the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional is commendable, and though we congratulate same-gender couples in California, today’s ruling by the Supreme Court still allows states to give special rights to some taxpayers while denying them to others. Discrimination is wrong. Everyone, including the nine justices on the Supreme Court, knows it. This ruling simply allows some states to continue to discriminate against law-abiding, taxpaying citizens. My partner and I got married in Atlanta, Georgia in 1981. The wedding was in a church, and we exchanged rings and vows just like any other couple. We received many wedding gifts, some of which we treasure to this day. What we still are waiting for is the civil rights for which our taxes pay. 

Churches have every right to decide for whom they will perform weddings. Governments, however, do not have the right to decide which citizens receive which civil rights. Law-abiding, taxpaying lesbian and gay people should be afforded the same civil rights as law-abiding, taxpaying heterosexuals, no matter in what state they live. That is the only issue. Each of the Supreme Court justices knows that this is true, but they lack the courage to do the right thing. History should, and will, scorn their cowardice. This is not a matter of supporting or opposing same-gender marriage. This is a matter of treating all Americans the same. They have chosen the route of continued discrimination, a decision that will elicit a sigh of relief in the former Confederate States where same-gender marriages still will be illegal, states that, until they were forced to in 1969, held that one of our current justice’s marriage was illegal because it was to a person of a different race. The discrimination today is different, but no less wrong. Bigotry often can be blamed on ignorance. The Supreme Court of the United States is not ignorant, which makes their cowardly decision all the more reprehensible. 

Rev. Michael Piazza is Senior Pastor of Virginia-Highland Church, a congregation of the United Church of Christ. During his 23 years of courageous leadership as senior pastor and later dean, the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas, Texas, made religious history by reclaiming Christianity as a faith of extravagant grace, radical inclusion, and relentless compassion while becoming the largest progressive Christian church in the South and the largest predominantly lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender church in the world.