Gay and lesbian people can now get married — and in church, nogal. It wasn’t an easy victory; most Christian groups (not to mention Islam) are deeply opposed to same-sex couples tying the knot in the sight of God. And, given the traditional antipathy to homosexuality (in any form) expressed by so many Christians, why would gay people want to get married in a religious ceremony, anyway? The debate is still raging, as recent articles in this paper attest.
I am agnostic on the issue of marriage and atheist on the matter of God, so it has been interesting for me to work on a book that covers some of this terrain. Melanie Judge (who was involved in the campaign that finally got same-sex marriage legalised), Anthony Manion (of Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action) and I have put together To Have and to Hold: The Making of Same-Sex Marriage in South Africa, which will be launched in May.
Because religious views were so strongly expressed during the campaign for and parliamentary hearings on the Civil Union Bill, we made a point of commissioning essays on the issue and interviewing people who chose to make their gay or lesbian weddings religious ones.
In December 2005, the Constitutional Court ruled that the Marriage Act of 1961 was discriminatory towards gay and lesbian couples who wanted the full rights of marriage. The court gave Parliament a year to remedy the injustice, and on November 30 2006, a day before the court’s deadline struck, the Civil Union Act was signed into law. Lesbian and gay couples could now marry and if their religious denomination approved (and had applied under the Act), they could marry in the sight of God too.
But the God aspect was by no means uncontentious. Inside and outside Parliament, argument raged, and much of it had to do with the relation of same-sex marriage and religion. The Reverend Kenneth Meshoe of the African Christian Democratic Party led a solemn protest against the proposed Bill, and melodramatically told Parliament that the passing of the Bill would be “the saddest day of the 12 years of our democratic Parliament”.
The Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference told Parliament: “Marriage of its very nature is ordained to the begetting and rearing of children; homosexual acts divorce the sexual act from procreation and the homosexual couple cannot cooperate with God to give new life.” Procreation is a big issue (for African traditionalists, who also opposed the Bill), but is that all marriage is for?
Intersexed activist Sally Gross points out in our book that the Book of Genesis in the Bible has two accounts of God’s creation of Adam and Eve, and the second (though older historically) gives God’s reason for making Eve clearly the provision of companionship for Adam. “It is not good that a person should be alone,” God says, and proceeds to create Eve.
But procreation wasn’t the only issue in the debate. The Marriage Alliance, a grouping of conservative Christian groups, trumpeted in Parliament: “The adoption of same-sex marriage will radically redefine marriage and family, will have far-reaching social consequences for generations to come, and will contribute to the social and moral confusion and instability we already experience in our society.”
They, and others, went on to call for a constitutional amendment that would “protect” marriage by defining it, in the Constitution, as an exclusively heterosexual institution.
Of religious bodies, only the South African Council of Churches (perhaps at odds with some of its members) came out in favour of same-sex marriage in the parliamentary hearings. In the year-and-a-half since the Act was signed into law, none of the large denominations have applied to conduct marriages under the Act. The Anglicans are still debating it (and may do forever), but others seem entirely uninterested. Smaller churches such as the Metropolitan Community Church group have, however, enthusiastically embraced it — they have conducted commitment ceremonies for years, but now it’s full-scale marriage. You can even wear white.
Certainly, spiritually inclined gay and lesbian people have made a point of having religious ceremonies, even if they then had to have another, legal one as well.
Hompi and Charles Januarie had two weddings, a religious and a civil one, about four years apart: they wanted to make sure they were married both in the sight of God and under the law. And, for them, the first was actually the most important and the second simply a legal confirmation — the state had finally caught up with God.
Margaret Auerbach and Liebe Kellen had the first Jewish same-sex marriage under the Civil Union Act, and it meant a lot to them to invoke the religious and cultural tradition in which they grew up — even if they had to change key parts of the ceremony (such as the ketubah or traditional marriage contract) to make them less sexist. Their chupah (canopy) was dyed in the colours of the rainbow flag.
When it came to smashing a glass underfoot, traditionally in remembrance of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, said Kellen, “for us the breaking was also a reminder that in our time of joy we should still remember the gay and lesbian people who are experiencing the oppression of the closet”.
Marriage is an odd mixture of personal commitment and public show; of property rights and romance; of civic obligation and religious avowal.
It’s clear that it is important for gay and lesbian people in this country not only to achieve equality under the law, but also to be able to perform traditional rites within the spaces of the religions that are also, under our Constitution, guaranteed their freedom.
Pastor Janine Preesman, who conducted the first legal Christian same-sex marriage after the Act was promulgated, describes the event: “The words that I used were: ‘For the very first time ever in a religious ceremony and in a church in South Africa, I now declare you legally married.’ There was dead silence and then the congregation exploded. People were clapping, shouting, whistling, and they were laughing and hugging each other. People were crying, and I think I was one of them.”
To Have and to Hold: The Making of Same-Sex Marriage in South Africa will be published by Fanele and launched in May