This has been a difficult few months for proponents of marriage equality. Most recently, Hawaii’s Governor Linda Lingle vetoed a bill that would allow gay marriage. She said the issue ought to be decided by voters. Last November, voters in Maine overturned the legality of same-sex marriage. The New York legislature said “no.” The issue may have influenced the outcome of the governor’s race in New Jersey. However, the Washington D.C. City Council voted to allow same sex marriage. When I consider my own history as an African-American woman, I am so glad that during the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s there were judges and legislators willing to stand for equal protection under the law even before the general public was ready for racial equality. I am so glad for a faith that believes that my LGBT brothers and sisters will one day receive justice.

So Glad! This is a praise that I have heard in worship. It is a praise that declares the joy and gratitude of a believer who knows that God is good all the time. It is a praise that recognizes that a transcendent mind, source of all, a radical Love, an Almighty God is present in the world and in history. It is a praise that praises the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It praises the temporal and eternal significance of love incarnate for the salvation of the world.

I believe God works in history. It is this faith that gives me peace in the midst of the fear, confusion, discord, dishonesty, pettiness and downright meanness that characterize much of the public discourse in our nation and in our world. It is faith that, from a God’s-eye view no matter what we see, justice is unfolding. We walk by faith and not by sight.

When this nation came to birth, most African-Americans were slaves. The man who penned the Declaration of Independence owned slaves and could never think his way around the contradiction. He knew intuitively that in slavery, the nation had the wolf by the ears, it could not hold on and could not let go. The United States Constitution counted my ancestors as three- fifths of a person. Some interpretations of Christianity taught that Black people were ordained by God to be slaves because Noah cursed his son Ham. Science said people of African descent were less intelligent. Racism distorted every area of American life and made the idea of Black inferiority part of the air we breathed.

As a woman, my foremothers were not given the constitutional right to vote until 1920. Blackwomen such as Fannie Lou Hamer were jailed and beaten in the Jim Crow south of the 1950s and 1960s because they wanted to register and vote. There was a moment in the history of this country when women lawyers could not argue a case in court. Women were thought to be too fragile to play full court basketball. Even now, some faith communities do not believe women ought to preach or pastor a congregation. The Catholic church does not allow female priests. Some faith communities do not allow women deacons. They hold this position because of their interpretation of the Bible.

I remember this history and current circumstance because God commands us to remember. The Word of God issues the imperative to remember over and over. Among other things, we are to remember that God has brought us out of slavery. We are commanded to give hospitality to the stranger. We are commanded to love them because we were once strangers in a strange land. Each of us can look into our history and find the slavery, the oppression of our ancestors.

The good news is: the third chapter of Lamentations reminds us: “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3: 22, 23) It reminds us that God will not reject forever. It tells us: “when human rights are perverted in the presence of the Most High, when one’s case is subverted – does the Lord not see it?” (Lamentations 3: 35-36) God hears our prayers and sends new mercies to bring us justice.

Some people believe that homosexuality is a sin, that it is a lifestyle choice that ought not to be sanctioned by the state. They see it as different from race or gender distinctions. They quote passages from the Bible to support the belief that homosexuality is outside of the perfect will of God. I say: our knowledge of human sexuality and of the will of God in this regard is too limited to make a claim that we impose on the whole of a non-sectarian society. Corinthians 13 reminds us that we ought to always remain humble in what we think we know. It says: “For we know in part, and we prophesy only in part, but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.” (I Corinthian 13: 9-10) The only thing that we ought not to understand as partial is love.

While our knowledge is too limited to judge, our moral imperative is clear. It is the Golden Rule. “So in EVERYTHING, do unto others what you would have them do to you.” (Matthew 7:12)

I am so glad that Abraham Lincoln did not ask for a referendum before issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. I am so glad that the Supreme Court did not wait for popular consensus before issuing the Brown v Board of Education decision that desegregated public schools. I am so glad the U.S. Congress did not wait for the end of racist attitudes before passing the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 or the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

I am so glad that through the eyes of faith I can see a day when the state is out of the marriage business. When we all – straight and LGBT– have rights and responsibilities under the laws of civil union or domestic partnership. Marriage will then exist within the domain of faith communities, and they can marry whom they will.

Our Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, and Transgendered sisters and brothers, our fellow citizens deserve equal protection under the law. They and their committed relationships deserve respect in custom and in law. They deserve our radical love that is not partial.