My Blessed Gay Marriage
A church blessing may not be a legal marriage, says a gay man, but it is a union in God's eyes
  By Macky Alston

I was a freshman in college in 1981 when I told my parents that I am gay. My father, a Presbyterian minister, mourned the fact that I would never marry, would never have children, would never be happy.

Already I had lived lifetimes of shame and anguish as a youth aware of his unacceptable sexuality, attempting to conform, bargaining with God for conversion--to being heterosexual. Later, during my years in seminary studying to be a minister like my dad, I returned to my shame and anguish and began to bargain with God once again.

And then, earlier this year, my father married me to Nick, my partner of 11 years. As I write this, I am caring for our three-month-old adopted baby girl named Alice (for my mother). [Blinking back tears...(It must be partially hormones or something—I'm not ususally such a total mush!)]

Our wedding was like an exorcism. It cast out our shame and replaced it with the recognition that we are capable of loving, that we are loved by God and our community, and that our love is good and God-filled. We needed bells. We needed fanfare. We needed a cheering crowd. We needed a wedding. And that's what God delivered.

It has not been easy to get to this point. When the world tells you from your first children's book that men and women, not men and men, marry, have children and find happiness, you take the world at its word. Sometimes I wonder how the human heart--my human heart--has had the strength to counter a world of wisdom with its own. ...