If the Church Were a Haven

This week marks the one-year anniversary of Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court decision that guaranteed same-sex couples the right to marry. In its own way, as I’ve remarked here before, Obergefell too was about that same solidarity, that same elusive ideal of sanctuary. Many gay and lesbian Americans interpreted the Court’s decision as one in which the United States “found, at last, a name for [the gay] soul,” as Jonathan Rauch has memorably put it. That name was “not monster or eunuch. Nor indeed homosexual. It is: husband [or wife].” Future generations will perhaps telescope these two events in poignant juxtaposition: Both Pulse and the SCOTUS ruling are symbols of what gay and lesbian people have long had to seek without finding, the havens they have come to rely on.