This sermon was delivered at Congregation B’nai Shalom on June 12, 2020
I’d like to take a few minutes tonight to talk about Loving. It turns out that in this moment, on this particular day, there are a lot of very pertinent ways to think about and talk about Loving.
Let’s begin with a piece of important history. June 12 is officially ‘Loving Day’ in a number of US States. The day is named for the monumental case, Loving v. Virginia, and the interracial couple at its center, Richard and Mildred Loving. The 1967 Supreme Court decision struck down 16 state bans on interracial marriage as unconstitutional.
Fast-forward to 2015, one in six newlyweds had a spouse of a different race or ethnicity which is more than five times higher than the number of intermarried newlyweds in 1967, according to Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. So much has changed, and yet so much hasn’t. Half a century later, “the toxic residue of Jim Crow across the centuries continues to make its way down the streets and into people’s lives.”
Those of you in our congregation who are married to someone of a different ethnic background, with a different color of skin to you have directly lived the blessing of coming of age and falling in love after the ‘Loving vs Virginia’ case. You can attest to the looks that you may have received, the strange questions you might get, and the assumptions made about the relationship between you and your kids by strangers on the street. I know that this isn’t every day and all the time, but I know that these experiences haven’t disappeared. I know because I’m the grandparent of mixed race grandchildren. I know because I’ve been out to dinner with my wife, my adult step-children, their other step-mom, my son-in-law whose family background is Philippine and my daughter-in-law whose mother is Korean, and father was African-American. And the waitress in a cool, hipster restaurant in Brooklyn finally couldn’t hold back any longer as we were paying the check and just couldn’t figure out how we were all related.
It wasn’t aggressive and it wasn’t negative. But if you are hearing words like ‘white supremacy’ or ‘implicit bias’ more these days and you’ve not really taken the time to read or study about these things, you might be wondering what is so wrong with the way things are. We have been socially conditioned to put people in different categories and boxes because of their skin color and ethnic features.
We haven’t yet learned to assume that what appears to be a family is a family, even if it looks different to yours. And, unfortunately, too many people still believe that they get to judge what is and is not acceptable.
Lets talk about another kind of loving. Because this is also Pride month. Before marriage equality for gays and lesbians was recognized Federally across all 50 states in 2015 (that’s a mere 5 years ago!), I used to wonder why the heterosexual majority got to decide if I deserved marriage. Heteronormative assumptions about society implicitly and, through law, explicitly and structurally, meant that ‘society’ was heterosexual and those of us who were not that were outside of the norm and needed to fight for 5 decades to argue, fight, protest, and march… and educate – to reach a point when ‘society’ decided to bestow these equal rights upon us. And we’re not there yet. People who are transgender don’t have equal rights in all 50 States. They can lose their jobs just because of their gender; nothing to do with their job performance. They are at much higher risk of experiencing physical violence perpetuated against them because of their gender. The current administration has been working to undermine the ability of same sex couples to have the same opportunities to adopt children in need of forever families as heterosexual couples. And I could go on. For no legitimate reason save for who they love and have built a home with. Or because their gender identity is different.
I understand these issues better because they are part of my own lived experience. And perhaps you understand them because you know me, or you’ve had direct experiences like these, or you’ve just reached a place where you understand and embrace this kind of diversity. Why do transgender people need our permission to live openly and go to work and go to restaurants and movies and stores feeling safe. What is it about some of these groups that society determines where they belong or if they belong or whether they have the same rights freedoms and opportunities as you or I? And if you believe that, once the inequality has been explained and challenged, it should be addressed, the next question must be… is that just an idea of what ‘nice’ looks like to you, or have you engaged actively in the advocacy and educational work required to make those changes a reality? That’s the difference between being ‘not homophobic’ and being actively ‘pro-LGBTQ equality.’
When we listen to African-Americans now it is the same question. Why do they have to wait for ‘society’ (unspoken but assumed to be a white majority that holds the power’)to grant them equality?
There was a time when traveling when I would always choose bed and breakfasts from a site called purple roofs. This site listed LGBT friendly places to stay or gay or lesbian owned places. I did not want to stay somewhere where Suri and I would feel eyes on us and be uncomfortable or possibly unsafe as we traveled to parts of the country that I was not familiar with.
This is an experience that African Americans have on a regular basis. Not just where they might travel to but how they pass through neighborhoods and other spaces in the course of their everyday lives. It is how and why a young man taking a jog can end up shot to death. And this is just a modern version of how it was in past decades where a black man who might glance at a white woman or say something in passing on the street could end up lynched. This is why these recent killings of black men whether by law enforcement or by civilians is a contemporary version of lynching. The underlying assumptions of the one who is looking at the black man as out of place are essentially the same. Both are racist.
And the difference between being ‘not racist’ and actively being ‘anti-racist’ is whether or not we see it as our responsibility to bring about the structural changes that would make true equality, opportunity, and safety, a reality in the lives of those who are telling us that this is not the case now.
That’s what this is about. It’s not about politics. It’s not about left vs right. It is about love. Today is Loving day. In Jewish tradition, one of our great Sages re-presents the Torah teaching to ‘Love Your Neighbor as yourself.’ Rather, Hillel teaches it this way: “What is hateful to you do not do to your fellow” (Shabbat 31a). If you are wondering what your role is in all of this and what, if anything, you should be doing, start here.
Let’s listen to a few seconds of anti-racism educator, Jane Elliott. [play video]
Listen to her words asking us ‘Is this how you would want to be treated?’ And if your answer is ‘no’ then let’s do some learning and listening and figure out how we might be able to help bring about change.
