The Rt. Rev. William E. Swing
Episcopal Bishop of California

Before General Convention 2003

(A speech I wrote for the debate on same-sex blessings. The situation for presenting it never arose because the issue was placed in an expanded control.)

Having struggled with the issue at hand for twenty-four years, I have come to an emphatic personal conviction based on Scriptures, experience, and truth-telling.

Scripture -- Guides to my Thinking

After seven days of Creation, God looked at all that He created and pronounced, "It is very good." One's sexuality as a gift from God is good. There is a moment when a person becomes aware of his/her sexual orientation, when Creation catches up with you, and whether straight or gay, "It is very good" to be created by God.

St. Paul says, "Owe no man anything but to love one another for love is the fulfilling of the law." As great as the law of God is, there is something greater, i.e., the love of God. If two people of the same sex live out their lives in the context of the love of God, to me that seems biblical and fulfills the law.

Experience

Back in 1980 and 1981, I interviewed as many homosexual people and couples as I could. One day it dawned on me that all of these people were not born in San Francisco. They came from cities and villages around this country -- disowned by their parents, kicked out of their churches. The gay community of San Francisco is a monument of the inability of Christian parents to bless their homosexual children. Some of those spiritual orphans survived the scorn, the self-loathing, the AIDS virus, and actually fell in love and against high odds lived as healthy, faithful couples. The question at hand: after all that, will the Church withhold its blessing again?

Marriage

Three weeks ago I had a service at Grace Cathedral for people who had been married for fifty years or more. Invitations went to 381 couples. A thousand people showed up at the Cathedral to celebrate the keeping of these vows and to witness the retaking of vows. The large number of homosexuals in the San Francisco Bay Area has not corroded the institution of marriage. Marriage thrives back home. And in my own home. Just because homosexual relationships are blessed, marriage among heterosexuals is not under attack.

Children

Some gay couples in our Diocese have adopted children. Seeing these families wrestling with the everyday issues of schooling, discipline, finances, friendships, etc., the scene looks pretty ordinary to me. And the children in every instance I've seen are doing fine.

This week I saw where the Roman Catholic Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith declared that allowing gay couples to adopt children would "actually mean doing violence to these children." After the stupefying aggregate of violence against children that has been tolerated and facilitated by their family of faith, it seems ironic and wrong that they mount an attack which has the potential of doing violence to the children and parents of gay families.

The Basic Assumption

The basic question we are debating is this: are homosexuals fully human beings? A short time ago our society was debating issues that swirled around blacks. Reducing these issues, it finally came down to this: are black people fully human beings in the ways that white people are fully human? Another stage of the question swirled around women. Now those questions swirl around gays. Religion's answer to these questions is critical. The most powerful Christian declaration to date is that gays are "intrinsically disordered." With the consecration of a gay man as a bishop and with the tacit affirmation of blessing same-sex unions, a powerful new Christian declaration now competes with the former one. Gays have moved from the ovens of Hitler to the status of being people to pity because of their distorted nature to the status of being fully human beings. Nothing less.

Truth-telling

Things have changed in the Episcopal Church vis-a-vis respect for homosexual people and couples in my twenty-four years in this House. I believe that this House and the House of Deputies will vote in a clear majority for ordination of non-celibate homosexuals and for blessing homosexual couples. What holds the majority back is an admirable pastoral concern for worldwide Anglicans, who might well see our actions as arbitrary, once again imposing America's will on the rest of the world. Also in our Church here there are lots of dioceses pastorally making progress on this issue but fear that a win/lose vote would chase away individuals and parishes. I know something of that sorrow.

I spoke and voted from that perspective at the last General Convention. But not this time. In the end, I have to tell the truth as it has been revealed to me. I cannot look at genuine love any longer and say that it doesn't exist. I cannot say to godly people any longer that there is nothing holy about them. I can no longer hold my hand over two people who have lived a common life of responsible compassion and pronounce that they are sinful.

And I can no longer say that the timing is wrong to offer a blessing. The thing about truth is that it must always be flanked by courage. For me, the day of courage, the time of truth-telling has come. Our gay children have come home and are out on the porch. It's time to open the door and give them a blessing.