Let me begin by asking you a question.

A year ago, my wife Meg and I moved from Boston, where we’d been living for three years, back to North Carolina. North Carolina is home to me – it’s where I grew up, where

Meg and I met, and where in 2008 we had a religious marriage ceremony prior to our legal ceremony, which was held in Massachusetts.

We left Massachusetts last fall as a legally married couple and, as we traveled South, we stayed married in Connecticut and New York. But in the moment we once again became residents of NC, we lost the rights that come with being married. What changed was not our love for one another or our commitment to our relationship, though I will bashfully concede that a 17-hour drive through thunderstorms in a 20 foot UHAUL truck packed to the gills did not bring out the best in me at least. What changed was simply our address. NC, 43 other states, and the federal government do not recognize our marriage as legal.

My question to you is this: Are we married?

In December 2010, the NC Supreme Court issued a ruling that banned second parent adoption for same-sex couples and, beyond this, struck down hundreds of adoptions that had already taken place. This year so far, five violent crimes motivated by anti-LGBT bias have been reported to law enforcment in our state, but data suggests others have occurred. And, as we all know, just two weeks ago the NC Legislature passed a bill that proposes an amendment to our state constitution, banning marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships.

All of these events are linked. They are symptoms of a larger problem.

In America, the full rights and responsibilities of citizenship are denied to LGBT people under federal and state law. The recognition of our full humanity is also denied by most religious traditions. Together, this constitutes a persecuting system that enforces its power through discriminatory laws and policies, religious teachings that condemn and exclude, and physical and spiritual violence.

It’s not quite that simple, though. Under the persecuting system, partial rights may be granted, and we are told to be content. Partial acceptance and love may be extended, and we are told to be grateful. And more often than not, we go along with it – not daring to call for full equality because in doing so, we risk our hard-earned partial equality. Indeed, the status quo is dangerously seductive precisely because it makes persecution bearable.

That LGBT people conduct our lives with ample joy, love and dignity testifies to our resilience. But while resilience may be a survival strategy, it is not an adequate solution to persecution.

The actual solution to persecution has its roots in a clear moral truth:  LGBT people are fully equal.

This is a truth I would stake everything on: we are fully human and fully equal.

As LGBT people in the South,however, we are told in ways both explicit and implict that this is not true and that we must wait for equality. We are told to be patient. We are told to pursue our rights in the courts. We are told to pursue our rights in the legislature.

But we have gone to the courts and the NC State Supreme Court has denied that we are families,in Boseman v. Jarrell. We have gone to the legislature and the legislature has now voted to enshrine discrimination into our state constitution.

What are we to do when these institutions perpetuate bigotry and anti-LGBT animus rather than promoting equality? What are we to do when we live under laws that deny our basic humanity and deny us the most fundamental legal protections?

There comes a time when each of us must ask: how long am I going to take this?

There comes a time when we are called by our conscience to resist the very laws that seek to dehumanize us and that fuel the flames of bigotry.

For me, this time has arrived.

Liberation originates not in the halls of our legislature and not in the chambers of our courts.  Liberation always originates in the lives of the persecuted and their closest allies, a hard truth we are reminded of anytime we study Scripture or history. Liberation begins when people stop saying, things aren’t great, but I can get by and start saying, every day that I live with injustice is one day too long.

And in the instant you say that, you immediately face two pressing questions:

o   What am I ready to do to achieve liberation?

o   How will I approach those who persecute me?

These questions are as old as dirt, and they are familiar to anyone who has felt the chilling effects of hatred or injustice.  These questions are about who we are as human beings and how we will conduct our lives. They are also entangled: you can’t answer one without confronting the other.

Today, I want to focus more on the second question.  How will I approach those who condemn and persecute me? Let me make this more pointed: how will I approach the judges and politicians who uphold laws that deny my basic humanity? How will I approach the person who lit a match in Clayton, NC? And – dear god – how will I approach the 19 year old boy who has confessed to murdering Stephen Starr?

Our faith seems to suggest that the answer is easy. “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.”

These words from Luke 6 don’t say to love your enemy ONLY if he loves you first. Or love your enemy ONLY if you can be assured he will not strike you, or beat you, or – God forbid – kill you.  These verses from Luke and many others say simply, love your enemy.

Easier said than done, I say.  Having grown up in the South and living here as an out adult has given me much occasion to think about this question. Here, LGBT people are in constant contact and relationship with those who oppose, or are conflicted about, our rights.  And yet the warmth and kindnesses that people associate with our region are not a matter of playing nice.

Powerful bonds are forged across lines of difference that people struggle to transcend in other parts of the country. In this charged context, these verses from Luke 6 start to live and breathe, and you figure out real quick that your enemy is actually your blood relative, or your neighbor, or the stranger you share an unexpected laugh with at the grocery story. Your enemy is the first man you fall in love with and kiss, so wracked by shame afterwards that he calls you a sinner and stops talking to you. Your enemy – when you drop your girlfriend’s hand at a restaurant because you’re afraid someone will see you – right then, your enemy is you.

When attacked, it is a human reflex to either fight or flee; when the attack is spiritual – calling into question the nature of your humanity – one’s instinctive response can be to strike back with a similar challenge. When someone says we are less than human, we say something similar back. And for a few seconds, it’s satisfying, like scoring a devastatingly incisive point in an argument with someone you love, only to see the damage you have just done.

What does mutual condemnation actually achieve? Its immediate yields may be sweet, but ultimately it is a form of spiritual violence. This is not the way forward as we seek liberation.

There is another way, and it involves holding the other not in the crosshairs, but in a steady, clear gaze, a form of witness – our faith teaches us – that does not imply agreement or complicity but rather a basic acknowledgment of the other’s humanity, which is another way to say, a basic acknowledgment that the other – my enemy – is also a child of God and thus utterly bound to me whether either one of us likes it or not.

I cannot break the bond between us because I did not make it.

This too is a human reality, after all.

Such recognition is a step toward empathizing with the other, which is another way of loving the other. To empathize with someone is to recognize her humanity and to understand that her life is based upon a particular set of values, feelings and experiences, even if we also strenuously disagree with these beliefs; it is a way to express agape, a type of love which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. defined as “understanding and creative, redemptive goodwill for all men”.

The capacity to love – the self and others – is the primary relational act of the soul and it is the greatest gift that God gives us. But with this gift come responsibilities – to love not only ourselves, our friends and our neighbors, but also our enemies.

Simple acts – the kind that ordinary people like you and I can take -  become radical because of context. Sitting on one bus seat bus instead of another in Montgomery. Remaining at a lunch counter when you are told to leave in Greensboro. Requesting a marriage license again and again, as couples in our community will be doing soon, knowing you will be turned down. Coming out at work knowing you may be fired. Raising your child with love and courage when the law says you are not your child’s parent.

Jesus tells us that loving your enemy is such an act – at once simple and radical and absolutely necessary if we are to create God’s kingdom here on Earth. Jesus shows us again and again that doing this will also mean taking risks. Jesus was mocked, pressured to change his beliefs, condemned and ultimately put to death because he dared to live by his faith.

As he preached and taught, as he walked into Jerusalem and even as his human body hung in pain on the cross, Jesus asked us to believe that every heart can be not only transformed, but also redeemed, through love.

God offers us this love and grace constantly. How can we not do the same?

It may not come easily or naturally, but let us always remember that God asks us to do hard work, but never impossible work. There is always a way to love and on the side of love, you will never be alone. Your brothers and sisters are here with you. God is here with you. And from these roots, a particular variety of love – what Gandhi called ahimsa, what Dr. King called agape, what Bishop TuTu called ubuntu, what we might call empathy – grows.  Love has changed the world before and it will do so again.  This too is a human reality.

This does not mean, however, that we will feel only love. When a dear friend, becomes in the stroke of a judge’s pen, a legal stranger to her young son b/c 2^nd parent adoptions have been banned in the state of NC, my heart breaks. When I hear that a friend has been beaten up and called fag, I feel grief and anger.

In the work I do with the Campaign for Southern Equality, I sometimes feel afraid because we are asking people to join us in taking action that brings with it real risk, and because we know that people in statehouses and churches across the region will not hesitate to use the power of the law or the pulpit to condemn LGBT people.

But in all of this, one thing I do not feel is impotent. For God has not only given us mandates to love those who persecute us, she has given us creativity and will. She has given us the courage and resilience and strength to turn  dark harbors of fear into beaconing ports of hope and faith. Above all she has given us the ability to love and, through love, to transform: mockery into mercy, condemnation into compassion and alienation into reconciliation.

So friends, I ask you,

o   What are you ready to do to achieve liberation?

o   How will you approach those who persecute you?

The world is waiting for your answer. Above all, God is waiting and urging us toward love.

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