It is good to be home. I was in North Carolina last weekend, officiating at the wedding of my niece, Lauren, the daughter of my oldest brother Glenn, who is as white as white can be. Here’s how white my brother is. When he retired two years ago, he bought a pick-up truck and a cowboy hat and began vacationing at a dude ranch in Wyoming. That’s how white my brother is. But back in the mid 1980’s, he married a woman he’d met at college whose parents were Filipino, and my brother and his wife had three children, one son who is as white as my brother, and another son and a daughter with beautiful dark skin like their mother.
It was their daughter who got married. She is bright and loving and perpetually tanned and married a man whose sister adopted a little Black girl, who was the flower girl. My brother David and his Black husband were also present, along with my nephew Pierson and his Hispanic wife. My white nephew who married a woman of Sri Lankan heritage couldn’t be there, but my other nephew who married a Black man, was, so we were all there together, a bunch of pale, pasty people with some Black and Asian folk mixed in, and not a moment too soon. The Gulleys are becoming less pale with each generation, for which I say, “Thank you, Jesus.”
In the bad, old days, they called interracial marriage “miscegenation,” and it was illegal in 41 states. Miscegenation was defined as the “reproduction between people of different ethnic groups, especially when one of them is white.” The famous example is Richard Loving, a white man, who married a Black women, Mildred Loving, in 1958. They were found guilty of violating Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924 and sentenced to prison. Their sentence was suspended by Judge Leon Bazile on the condition the Lovings leave Virginia and never return. The Supreme Court of Virginia upheld their sentence, but in 1967 the United States Supreme Court found in the Loving’s favor, removing the legal barrier to interracial marriage. Had that not happened, I have two brothers and three nephews whose marriages would have been illegal. Even I have a mixed marriage. Joan was a Methodist Democrat, while I was a Quaker Republican, a matter we resolved by her becoming a Quaker and me becoming a Democrat. The things we do for love.
We’ve been talking about the things that give us hope, and today I want to say that even as the current iteration of American leadership seems determined to eliminate diversity, equality, and inclusion, many Americans are happily embracing those values. To millions of Americans, the people of color others appear to fear, are to us treasured family and friends, and we will not tolerate their diminishment or abuse. We do not, for even a moment, believe they are less American, less human. We resist, with a smile of steel, any law, edict, or executive order that denies their full humanity.
We believe the same Constitution that protects our rights also protects their rights, the same God who love us also loves them, the same opportunities we enjoy should also be enjoyed by them. But more than that, we believe historic wrongs should be set right. It is not simply sufficient to apologize and pledge to do better. Rather, it is incumbent upon those of us who have benefited from power and privilege to establish systems of redress and reparation that address and remedy our national sin of exclusion. When we were young, we were taught by our parents to repair the damage we did. It’s one of the first things we’re taught. Our societal misdeeds are no different. When we break it, we fix it. We repair the damage we did. We do not, under any circumstances, multiply injury.
This is what gives me hope. Ill-intentioned governments and leaders can pass all the hateful laws they wish, but there will always be people of good conscience who will resist their odious laws. Make no mistake, there are some in our nation today who are as committed to furthering historic harms as we are to correcting them. There are some in our nation who will not be content until everyone in this nation looks like them and thinks like them. But thank God, there are many more people in our nation who treasure the broader palette of humanity.
I have hope, because I know that no leader can make a nation become what it refuses to become. A president may well have the power to order, but the power to obey or not obey rests with the people. What we will not obey are those orders that strike at the heart of our families, what we will not obey are those orders that diminish the people we love.
Years ago, the superintendents of our yearly meeting, a husband and wife, asked to meet with me and another pastor, so we went, and were told we couldn’t marry gay people, that our Faith and Practice forbid it, that same-gender marriage hadn’t been agreed upon by our yearly meeting, and that as long as they were in charge, it wouldn’t be allowed. My fellow pastor told them he would not place his conscience in the hands of the ethically challenged.
I have hope, because I know there are millions of people determined to do the right thing no matter how many others might loudly declare it to be the wrong thing. I have hope because of the people who remember the words of that great Hoosier saint, John Wooden, who said, “There is no pillow as soft as a clear conscience.” I have hope, because I know there are millions of Americans who recognize unjust and cruel laws when they see them, and are determined to disobey them, come what may. Be careful, friends, never to covet the approval of cruel people. Be careful never to sell your soul for pennies on the dollar. Once your conscience is gone, it is gone for good. Remember always, that there is no pillow as soft as a clear conscience.