A Love Supreme, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

Last spring, when my husband was in the hospital for what would turn out to be the last time, my friend, Rick, would call me.  Often.  He did this not only because he’s my friend (one of the bestest), but also because his partner of more than two decades, Bill, was in the hospital, too, with an illness from which he might not recover.

Here’s a dirty little secret:  life-and-death situations are viciously funny.  Rick and I would make each other laugh until we cried.  And sometimes, when we most wanted to cry, we would make each other laugh.

These are horrible experiences, and, even though you’ll miss out on the laughing parts, I hope you never have them.  And yet, even when things are this bad, our society insists on establishing a hierarchy of who can feel bad and who must feel worse.

Because I was legally married, I had complete access to John’s doctors and his records.  I was part of every decision about his care.  If I didn’t have a necessary document at hand, the hospital helped me to either find it or create a new one.  They never asked to see my marriage license (a good thing, since I have no idea where it is).  They believed me.

Rick didn’t have this.  He had to find those documents that authorized him to make decisions and pay bills.  If he needed Bill’s signature on something and Bill was unconscious, he was stuck.

They needed to be married.  Legally.

Because they live in Pennsylvania, that can’t happen.  But I’m absolutely thrilled that they will soon be married in their church, to which they’ve belonged for 20 years and where Rick sings in the choir <http://www.christianpost.com/news/over-30-united-methodist-pastors-in-pa-to-officiate-same-sex-wedding-despite-denominations-ban-107148/>.  And it looks like more than two dozen ministers will compete to administer their vows.

This is not about Rick and Bill, or at least not all about Rick and Bill.  A Methodist minister from nearby town is being brought up on charges within his church because he officiated at the wedding of his son to another man.  That wedding took place in Massachusetts, where it was legal.

This is a big deal to the Methodists, and I don’t claim to have any special insight into their doctrines nor their customs.  If they were Jews, it wouldn’t even be an issue, because there is no single central Jewish authority that determines what Jews believe.  There are rabbis who will perform same-sex marriages and rabbis who won’t.  Jews don’t really like anyone telling us what to believe, unless we’re ultra-Orthodox, and then we not only like being told what to do, but we like telling you that you have to do it, too.

Which is one reason why I’m not ultra-Orthodox.  Also, the wigs.

To me, Rick and Bill’s story is lovely, a community coming together to support each other and express the values they share as a congregation.  However, that is not how everyone sees it.  A blog post from a conservative site <http://www.standfirminfaith.com/?/sf/page/30902> elicited this in the comments:  “But by taking that step, though, they would lose the opportunity to make spirited announcements, look important, link arms, sing Phil Ochs tunes to attract attention, and attempt to re-live their distorted version of the 1960s in corrupting yet another mainstream denomination in a wealthy western nation.”

Phil Ochs?  Show tunes, darling.

We’ll let the Methodists work this out.  Maybe the congregation will split away from the main church, or maybe they’ll find a way to work out an accommodation.  That’s up to them, and only affects me to the extent that they enjoy tax-exempt status. so that my taxes subsidize them.    That is no small thing.

And it brings me to the next heinous example of religious extremists, perhaps with the best of intentions, screwing up people’s most intimate relationships.  In this case <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/24/us/case-explores-rights-of-fetus-versus-mother.html?_r=1&>, it’s the relationship of a young woman and her doctor.

If you read the story, you’ll see that several states have passed laws that provide mandatory legal representation to zygotes.  A woman who is pregnant, or suspected of being pregnant, can be forced to undergo medical exams and, depending on the results, forced to take medications that may or may not be what she wants.  In the first example int he article, the pregnant woman had told her doctor that she used to take drugs, but had stopped the year earlier.   The state came in, and began giving her drugs to counter-act the drugs she was no longer taking.

Doctors don’t like this law.  Here’s what I consider to be the key quote:  “Ms. Paltrow’s group has documented hundreds of cases nationally over the last decade in which women were detained, arrested or forced to accept medical procedures in the name of fetal protection, with low-income and minority women affected disproportionately.”

And also:  “In 2011, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said that ‘incarceration and threat of incarceration have proved to be ineffective in reducing the incidence of alcohol or drug abuse” and that mandated testing and reporting lead women to avoid prenatal care that “greatly reduces the negative effects of substance abuse during pregnancy.’”

We’re not talking about abortion here.  The woman in the first example was not trying to get an abortion, but rather pre-natal care.  We’re talking about seizing the bodies of women who, perhaps, are behaving in a way that disturbs the religious extremists.

We need to let women determine what works best for themselves when it is happening within their own personal bodies.  We need to let people decide who to love and care for.  God, they keep telling me, is Love.

Wish they’d act like it.

Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, was the belle of the ball last week.  Thanks for asking.