There’s been something on my mind lately, and since I’m trying to live out my value of radical hospitality, I guess I need to talk about it. It’s hard, and I’ve written & rewritten this thing like 4 times, but I feel like I need to share my hurt, my anger, and just a little good news.
So, there’s a funny thing I learned in divinity school which doesn’t seem to be that widely known… Scholars think that Sodom and Gomorrah’s sin was actually Inhospitality.
Weird, huh? Lots of scholars disagree with the interpretation that they were punished for “homosexuality”… but rather have interpreted that the members of these cities were punished for turning their backs on strangers who needed help, and for trying to take advantage of and rape them. In other words, as the Reverend Patrick Cheng puts it, for “Radical Inhospitality.”
I’m not going to argue biblical interpretation with anyone, as I focused on religious education during my studies, but I will say that if Cheng and other biblical scholar’s interpretation is true, my home, my state of Mississippi, the place I love, is in a lot of hot water with God for our statewide elected officials’ actions recently.
Last Thursday Mississippi followed in the footsteps of Georgia and North Carolina, and passed a law that allows for business owners, city & county officials, and nonprofits who have a “sincere religious belief” that marriage can only be between one man and one woman to refuse services to, terminate the employment of, and refuse to do businesses with people who they believe fall outside of that… so, folks who are gay, lesbian, transgender plus folks who are having extramarital affairs or premarital sex. They are allowed to discriminate because they are now protected from law suits and from having their tax exempt status removed.
Legislators who are in favor of the law say that it’s just a small way they are protecting their constituents’ religious freedom, and that it really doesn’t impose upon anyone else.
If you read the law carefully, then you’ll notice that those claims are simply, flatly, untrue.
If you are a pastor who performs a gay wedding (and there are plenty of preachers in MS who have or who will) someone could refuse to let you rent a house. If you are having sex with your girlfriend before marriage you can lose your job. If you’re having an affair, someone could refuse to serve you dinner. Or provide you a hotel room. If you’re a woman who likes to wear pants (and sometimes a collared shirt and tie to work a la Annie Hall, your employer could sanction you if it’s against the dress code. Y’all, on top of this bill being serious radical inhospitality for our own people, it’s just bananas.
Of course, the governor signed the bill into law. On the same day Tennessee William’s Portrait was hung in the Capitol. And two months after Tig Notaro won the Governor’s Arts Award.
hmmmph.
Ellen has had something to say about this, a ton of the most famous Mississippi authors wrote a letter denouncing it, and lots of Mississippians have been venting on Facebook and twitter. Several businesses have spoken out, but I think that this piece by Rethink Mississippi really sums it up. News outlets have been going crazy, and Funny or Die made a pretty hilarious new “tourism” video for Mississippi…. it’s hilarious if you aren’t from here and aren’t furious and heartbroken by what’s happened.
Which I am. I’ve been hurting for days. It hurts all the more when I hear friends who’ve left Mississippi claim that laws like these are what will keep them from ever returning.
I’m hurting is because this law wounds some of the people I hold most dear… a couple of years ago, Brett and I had the honor to officiate a wedding of two friends in Oxford. As two women, they had reservations about getting married in Mississippi and how they might be treated, but it’s where they met and worked, and had lots of close friends. THANKFULLY, they had no trouble at all with the venue, the caterer, the florist, or the band.
But the cake.
That damn cake. When the cake lady from Memphis learned that my friend was marrying another woman, she berated her, belittled her, quoted the Bible, and refused to bake for her.
During one of the happiest times in my friend’s life, she was made to feel less than human by some person living out her “religious freedom” and, I guess, her “freedom of speech.” But where was that baker’s love? Her compassion? Her hospitality?
My friend is tough, and the pain and hurt of that encounter eventually waned. But the thought that this bill might empower other people to do the same thing the same WAY, AND to do it in Jesus’ name hurts me.
What does it mean that the state with the most houses of worship per capita, the state known as the hospitality state, the state with the most memorable and visible history of racial strife and racism has a new law that promotes INhospitality, (the same crime of Sodom & Gomorrah, no less) prejudice, & homophobia?
If you belong to a church community that doesn’t allow men and men or women and women to wed, honestly, I don’t like it, but I get it. You read the Bible differently than I do. But you know, because of the separation of church and state, your church is pretty much already protected…. there doesn’t NEED to be a new law to allow you to turn happy, joyful, in love couples away. You’re just exercising your freedom of religion. But please, please do it with kindness.
WHY then? WHY do we even need this law?
I just can’t wrap my head around it and feel just so angry and so, so sad.
The good news is that there are so many Mississippians, so many faith leaders, and so many churches that feel the same way. We will welcome anyone and everyone to our tables, to our wedding venues, and to our places of business. We have same-gender loving couples as friends, as colleagues, and as members of our church communities and we LIKE it that way.
The good news, I guess, is that this was an opportunity for Mississippians who DON’T say things to other Mississippians like “If you don’t like the way we are, then you can just move” or “We’re just protecting the Christian Faith from Christ-haters and sinners” to identify each other so we can be better organized next time. So we can fight. So we can act SOONER rather than LATER. So we can hold each other up and practice our version of Christianity or hospitality or whatever.
In fact, Brett and I went to a protest of this bill on a Monday ago, and even though it was too little too late, I was heartened that the rallying cry was “We’re all in this together. If you’re against this bill, then you’re also against other forms of discrimination and oppression. Stand up for LGBT rights, but also Black and Latino/Hispanic rights, women’s rights, and children’s rights.” That felt important.
In the midst of state-sponsored inhospitality, in the middle of a state that is portrayed as a place of divisiveness and segregation, someone was saying, “We’re in this together.” And we are.
Mississippi, we can do better. We ARE in this together.
We are the Hospitality state, Not, as one protestor’s sign put it, the Hostility state. But we’re going to have to earn that title.
If you’re a Mississippian who believes like I do, and who wants to see us love our neighbors and welcome everyone to the table, then please, speak up. Put a sticker on your door, write a letter to an editor, pay attention to the #blacklivesmatter movement and any activists with the Human Rights Campaign. Best yet, if you’re a person of faith, encourage your ministers and your houses of worship to tackle specifically the issue of same-sex marriage, and also Jesus’ role as a liberator and voice for radical hospitality.
We can make Mississippi truly hospitable for everyone, but we’ll have to work at it.
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