Rabbi Ellen Lippmann

March 27, 2004 

Thank you so much. I am honored to be among these honorees and to be selected by you. It was a pleasure to be in touch with Susan Loeb again, whom I knew when our children were young, and I know how tirelessly she has worked on behalf of CBID. I am touched to receive this honor from my dear friend Phil Saperia, former president of Kolot Chayeinu and linchpin of our community. And I give profound thanks to Assemblyman Jim Brennan who has been such an amazing supporter of Kolot Chayeinu's - coming to fundraising events is one thing, but sitting through the longest Rosh HaShanah service on record last fall is clearly above and beyond the call of duty! And I give my deepest love and appreciation, as always, to my partner, Kathryn Conroy, with whom I was married exactly eight weeks ago in this very building, after twenty years of being together. 

When she called to ask me about this night, Susan told me that I was being honored for my work in pursuit of social justice. So let me reflect briefly on my most recent such pursuit. I had my fifteen minutes of fame a couple of weeks ago when Rev. Pat Baumgardner and I solemnized the weddings of gay and lesbian couples on the steps of City Hall. The solemnizing was the important part, meaning the invoking of the power vested in me by the State of New York. Until this point, every gay or lesbian wedding at which I had officiated was in a kind of extra-legal category. Now, it was illegal, given some fuzziness in the law. The Manhattan District Attorney declined to prosecute, however, so here I am to tell you about it. 

The wedding was beautiful, bringing tears to many eyes, and feeling like any other wedding, only heightened. I never saw so much press as on March 18. We gave sort of informal press conferences before the wedding ceremonies, and spoke to dozens of reporters afterward. It was a dream for people like me, and probably like you, who have worked so hard for so long trying to get one or two reporters to come to your important protest - in my case, I think especially of the years doing anti-hunger prayer services on the steps of City Hall every month with Interfaith Voices Against Hunger.  

In the midst of all the pre-wedding questions, Alisa Solomon, a writer for the Voice and the Nation and other publications, asked me if this action raised questions about the separation of church and state, what with clergy being vested by the power of the state and all. Since I was about to use that power to solemnize a wedding, I said to her that I thought that was a question for another time.  

Now it's another time. So I can answer her question, although she is not here to hear it: I do think marriage in general in this country raises profound questions about the separation of church and state, What are clergy doing invested with the power of the state of New York, and why is it clearly illegal for me to officiate at a wedding between a woman and a man without a license? 

My wish is that we sever what we might call civil unions for all from religious weddings. Every couple, straight or gay, could go to the City Clerk's office, get a license, have it signed by an official vested with the power of the state and then if they wanted to could have a wedding officiated by a clergy person of their choice. It would simpler, cleaner, and completely equitable. Then the only fights about gay marriage would be in religious denominations, and I can only do something about that in my own, which supports both civil and Jewish marriage for gay men and lesbians. Religion - or any one religion - would be unable to counter the state's issuance of licenses to couples, gay or straight.  

To take a example closer to home, why am I allowed to claim half or more of my income as tax-free parsonage? This leftover from the day when Protestant ministers made miserable salaries and were given a home in which to live in small recompense is exactly that - a leftover, which ought to be changed. I speak completely against self-interest here, but for a further separation of church or state. If we don't separate this special perk, why not give tax-free parsonage to day care providers or school teachers or social workers or tenant organizers, all of whom make less than I do?  

I won't even dwell on the battles for a woman's right to choose, where religion is so mixed up in lawsuits and congressional bills that it is hard to see clearly. What happened to the days when public officials practiced their faith privately and considered policies on the basis of the good of all?  

In yesterday's Times, Kenneth C. Davis wrote an op-ed piece about our founding fathers and their religious connections and governmental policies. They came from an era of religious intolerance and discrimination, yet were "also children of ...the Enlightenment.... More important than the founders' private faith," he wrote, "was the concept that they all embraced passionately: the freedom to practice religion, as well as not to..." If we want to preserve that great freedom, we have to look at all the mushy gray areas in our society where religion or government intrude too heavily. Gay marriage, abortion rights, parsonage and others all present us with this challenge.  

If we want freedom of religion, and believe me, I do, then we must also wrestle with the right of government to be free of religion and vice versa. In the places where they intersect oddly, we see the question starkly. So let's separate legal marriage from the religious wedding, and push on me to pay taxes on all my income, and ask all members of Congress to vote on issues such as this week's Unborn Victims of Violence Act without their particular religious beliefs foremost in their minds. If they can begin to focus on the common good, not the good of one brand of religion, then I will want to pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.