My conscience was formed by a Catholic upbringing that trained me to have compassion for the poor and the persecuted, to listen to the still, small voice within me, and to stand firm in my convictions even when it meant turning my back on the confused values of a culture caught up in selfishness, hatred, and fear. But today, when the Archdiocese of Boston is using the full weight of its influence to pressure the state of Massachusetts to deny loving couples the right to marry just because both partners are of the same sex, the only way to remain true to the upbringing is to separate myself from the church, publicly declaring that it does not and can not speak in my name.

The church claims to be defending Christian teachings by insisting that a marriage can only be between a man and a woman – but Jesus never said anything to condemn the love between two women or two men. The closest he comes to speaking about the relationship between two people is to say that he is present whenever two or more people are gathered in his name. Where does this church find Biblical authority for this teaching?

If the church were to cite early Jewish marriage laws rooted in the Old Testament, in order to be consistent it would also have to require widows to marry their brothers-in-law under certain conditions. Neither Christians nor Jews follow the letter of these ancient marriage laws today, recognizing them as archaic legal codes with little or no theological grounding. Or is it from the letters of Paul, which were meant as commentaries on Jesus’s teachings for communities scattered across the Mediterranean in the first century? Does the church then also hold up Paul’s teaching that wives must be subject to their husbands? Or for that matter does it condemn men who have long hair as Paul does in the first letter to the Corinthians. No, the church recognizes that Paul’s views on gender existed with a specific historical and cultural context.

Jesus was friend to adulterers and tax collectors, breaking the religious and civil laws of his day by sharing meals with outcasts, declaring a new law of love. Where would he be today – with canon lawyers who search the scripture for reasons to condemn people for their love and church leaders who try to impose their own definition of marriage on a secular civil society, or with people condemned by the world for seeking a way to publicly declare their commitment to love each other for the rest of their lives, who risk violence and discrimination by publicly showing their love for each other?

Equally troubling is the lack of any sense of proportion church leaders are showing. After the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that marriage laws that excluded same sex couples were unconstitutional, the state’s Roman Catholic Bishops declared the ruling "a national tragedy" (despite the fact that the ruling would have no effect whatsoever on what kind of marriages the church decided to consecrate.) These same Bishops have held press conferences, sent letters to thousands of Catholics, and organized "Defense of Marriage" meetings to try to pressure the legislature to amend the state constitution to ban same sex marriages. But when the U.S. government killed over 4,000 civilians in Afghanistan, the church was silent. When the U.S. launched a war of aggression against Iraq, you had to look long and hard to find these Bishops’ mild and measured statements of concern. Archbishop O’Malley is famous for his work with the homeless, but when has he ever called homelessness "a national tragedy"? Why isn’t the Archdiocese clamoring for a constitutional amendment declaring the right to food, housing and health care? The church in Massachusetts has placed a higher value on imposing its view of marriage on non-Catholics than it has on defending human life.

I haven’t been a practicing Catholic for many years. I’ve looked instead to the practices of my Irish ancestors who integrated Jesus’s teachings on love and justice with older, Druidic beliefs that honored the sacredness of all life, the cycles of Earth, sun, and moon, and both the masculine and feminine aspects of

the divine. I’m most apt to call myself a pagan because most pagans welcome me with open arms while many Christians tell me it is heresy to honor both Jesus and Brigid as expressions and aspects of the same divinity.

But staying away from the church is no longer enough, in a time when the church rejects loving couples because both members are of the same sex, I have to call on the church to reject me too – I cannot stay in a church that would reject my lesbian and gay sisters and brothers anymore than I could stay in a Church that would reject people because of the color of their skin. If Jesus lived today, he would teach love, and that teaching would get him excommunicated. And so I say: take my name off your rolls, I will no longer be counted as a Catholic. Excommunicate me.