In pictures Jesus wore dresses. It was the style of his time. Until the sixties most women only wore pants for exercise or outdoor fun or work. A woman wearing pants to church was shocking and considered downright scandalous. I’m almost 86 and I haven’t worn a dress in about ten years. But I visited a church once where the preacher said that women having short hair and wearing pants were trying to attract other women. I looked around and realized I was the only woman with short hair and wearing slacks. My husband (Male) and I (female) were married for almost sixty years.

I remember my very conventional husband having a fit over our oldest son letting his hair grow long. I remember having to put a Kleenex on my head to go to the Catholic Church because the bible says women must cover their heads in worship services.

There are many normally kind people who are very threatened by change and can respond surprisingly unkindly to people who are different.

Sex variations are of course more difficult for very conventional people to handle.

I remember a great-aunt on my mother’s side, a librarian, who wore tailored suits and short hair and frankly, looked like very mannish. She lived alone all her life and seemed sad and lonely. I suspect she would have been a lesbian today. And there are pictures of a great-great aunt on my dad’s side who was extremely beautiful and feminine looking in a long-ruffled dress of that time. She somehow managed to get her MD as a pediatrician in the early 1900s and opened a pediatric clinic for the poor. When I asked the cousin showing me the family photos why I had never heard of this amazing woman, she pointed to another woman in the background of the photo and said, “Because she and that other woman lived together all their lives.” What gender that woman loved mattered more than her exceptional mind, courage, and kindness to poor children. I doubt any man’s ego in that era could have handled being married to her anyway! It seems a strange value system to me.

Making laws preventing same sex couples from marriage, which to me is the best school for learning to love another imperfect person, seems cruel and counterproductive for Jesus’ wish for people to grow loving when it’s hard.

There are people who have genitalia of both sexes. There are boys who are born obviously more feminine than male. There are girls that would never attract a male even if they wanted to! Learning to love is the challenge for us all, not just some of us. Who we marry is pretty much the most personal thing any of us does. I know a lot of gay marriages that have outlasted many of the heterosexual marriages I know.

Our culture is rampant with heterosexual couples having sex outside marriage relationships, many of which result in unplanned pregnancies with heartbreaking choices and/or disastrous marriages or one parent and child living in poverty. Gay and lesbian sex does not have that potentially tragic outcome. And two people without children who work will seldom be on welfare.

Jesus challenged those about to throw stones in judgement of a woman. He didn’t tell the Samaritan woman with many marriages that she couldn’t enter the kingdom of heaven by beginning to follow him.

Poor Paul advised Christians not to marry unless they just couldn’t resist having sex. I don’t think Christianity would still exist if celibacy was a prerequisite for Christians. I presume Paul thought Jesus would come back quickly. Obviously, Paul was mistaken.

There are many legal evils in our world right now with horrendous consequences. Same sex marriage is not one of them.