A Must Read -- OPINION: Use love to cast out fear [View all]

The Cincinnati Enquirer
Feb 27, 2014
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20140228/EDIT02/302280038/OPINION-Use-love-cast-out-fear?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|FRONTPAGE|p

OPINION: Use love to cast out fear

(excerpt)

My life changed in the 1960s when students invited Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to sit-in at Atlanta lunch counters. I was among those arrested with Dr. King, spending three days in a jail cell next to him. Our efforts led to the eventual integration of downtown Atlanta, all because we were willing to do the right thing. Dr. King taught us that discriminatory and unjust laws were no laws at all, and that we had a moral responsibility to act as if those laws no longer existed. I experienced a greater law of love that was more powerful than any law made in fear.

Now some 50 years later, my lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer brothers and sisters are faced with laws cast from the same fear that fed the Jim Crow South.

I am a bishop in the United Methodist Church, given the charge to uphold our laws – some of which discriminate against gay and lesbian persons, calling them “incompatible with Christian teaching.” However, I am also required as bishop to call the church to do the right thing.

That is why in 2012 I called on my colleagues to ignore the discriminatory laws of my church and to officiate same-sex weddings. That is why last October I traveled down to Birmingham, Ala., to preside over the wedding of Joe and Bobby. That is also why I am coming to Cincinnati to share my story. I am coming to share my vision of the ways we can be obedient to the greater law of love that Jesus lived...