Unitarian Universalist Minister Recalls Congregation’s Role in Rhode Island Marriage Equality Campaign

James Ford, a Unitarian Universalist minister in Southern California, writes that a Pride-themed party he attended in May 2017 led him to reflect on his work with his congregation and on what he describes as the place of Unitarian Universalists in the struggle for LGBTQ rights. He says he was reluctant to attend, but at the party he was introduced to an older guest who said that, in some years, the Unitarians were almost the only safe haven for gay people. Ford writes that the man simply said “thank you,” and that he had been thinking about it all weekend.

Ford draws on his mentor, the late Reverend Dan O’Neal, who he says liked to say that Unitarian Universalists are not cutting-edge people but are “down the bevel a little,” early though not the earliest. Ford states that Unitarian Universalists recognized the injustice of prejudice against people outside a complementary sexual binary relatively early, and he says that only the Friends were ahead of them among organized, or semi-organized, religious groups.

Ford says that when he was asked by a seminarian about the highlights of his twenty-five years as a parish minister, he named the marriage equality campaign in Rhode Island. He writes that he and his spouse arrived in Providence when marriage equality was a central political question, and that his congregation, the third oldest in the state, was, in his account, the principal religious community speaking for marriage equality. He says several state officials passed through the congregation during his tenure. He describes the decision as having been made by the legislature rather than by a court or a popular vote.

Ford quotes from a 2013 blog post he wrote on the night of the final vote. In it, he describes lobbying senators with a team of clergy, being unable to get gallery seats, and watching the vote on closed-circuit television in a State House basement office. He reports that the message he wrote then was two words: “We won.” Ford says that reading those words again moved him to tears.

Ford also notes that the campaign was not complete. He cites a Gallup poll, which he says shows that about sixty-eight percent of Americans support marriage equality, and says roughly a third do not. He writes that the mistreatment of LGBTQ people remains widespread and says that gay people in Chechnya are held in what he calls “death camps.” He acknowledges that these situations are not the same, but argues that denying basic human rights is a slippery slope. Ford’s statements about Chechnya and the Gallup figures are his own claims in the post, and the article does not independently verify them.

Finally, Ford writes that American Unitarian Universalists are in the middle of a serious self-evaluation about race and racial relationships, and about how institutional racism affects even open-hearted people. He says the denomination is not perfect because it is made up of people, and he describes its two central principles: that the individual is as precious as life itself, and that all people are bound together with each other and the world.

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