Buddhist same-sex marriage was born in the USA. That’s a little known
but significant fact to reflect on now, just after the Supreme Court
has declared legal marriage equality throughout the country.
Appropriately enough, it all started in San Francisco, and was conceived
as an act of love, not activism.
The first known Buddhist same-sex marriages took place in the early
1970s, at the Buddhist Church of San Francisco. Founded in 1899, it’s
the oldest surviving temple in the mainland United States. It’s also
part of the oldest Buddhist organization outside Hawaii: the Buddhist
Churches of America (BCA), part of the Shin tradition of Pure Land
Buddhism.
During the Nixon years, the LGBTQ rights movement was picking up, and
San Francisco was one of the primary centers of both activism and
community building. Located not far from the famously gay Castro
District, the Buddhist Church of San Francisco (BCSF) was attended by
singles and couples, gay and straight. As consciousness rose, people
began to seek the same services that heterosexuals already enjoyed in
American society.
A male couple in the congregation eventually asked Rev. Koshin Ogui,
then assigned to BCSF, to perform their marriage. He readily agreed, and
the ceremony was held in the main hall—identical to other marriages at
the temple, except for the dropping of gender-based pronouns in the
service.
Without fanfare, history was made.
Soon other BCA temples were also conducting same-sex marriages, and
by the time of my research into the subject in the early 2010s, I
couldn’t find a single minister in the scores of BCA temples who was
unwilling to preside over same-sex weddings. Indeed, BCA ministers had
already performed marriages for gay and lesbian couples, bisexuals,
transgender people, and polyamorous groups. Many of these were
interracial marriages, or carried out for non-Buddhists who had nowhere
else to go, though most were for members of local BCA temples.
The BCA and its sister organization in Hawaii had gone on record
years earlier in support of marriage equality, and even lobbied the
government to change the law. This support for LGBTQ rights has been
recognized by the Smithsonian, which collected a rainbow-patterned robe
worn by the BCSF’s current minister for the museum’s permanent
collection.
I’m ordained in the Shin tradition, so I was already aware of Shin
inclusivity. (Indeed, though I’m not gay myself, I would not have joined
any organization that failed to support LGBTQ rights.) But the
historian in me itched to explain this phenomenon more comprehensively.
Why was the BCA the first Buddhist organization to move toward marriage
equality, and why hadn’t this movement provoked rancor and conservative
resistance, as we’ve seen in so many other American religious
denominations?
In searching for answers, I came to several interrelated conclusions.
First, the history of racial and religious discrimination that the
originally Japanese-American BCA faced (everything from mob violence to
WWII internment camps) instilled revulsion for discrimination in Shin
circles. Second, since Shin ministers are not celibate (the tradition
was founded by a married monk in 13th-century Japan), they share
lifestyles similar to their parishioners, and thus readily empathize
with them on matters of sexuality and social relationships, which may be
more abstract to celibate monks and nuns.
But most importantly, what minister after minister told me was that
the fundamental point of Shin Buddhism is that Amida Buddha embraces all
beings without any exceptions, without any judgments, without any
discrimination. Amida opens the way to the Pure Land (and thus
liberation) to the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the good
and the bad, the black and the white. Therefore, Amida Buddha also
embraces the gay and the straight, the gender-conforming and everyone
else, without any hesitation. It is this spirit that led Shin ministers
to open their doors to same-sex couples, led Shin temples to march in
Pride parades across the country, to pass proclamations affirming
same-sex rights and marriage in particular, and to carry out education
programs in their own communities.
The Shin community hasn’t been alone in supporting LGBTQ communities
in American Buddhist circles. Though not as quickly or comprehensively,
many other Buddhist groups have also moved toward performing same-sex
marriages and affirming the value of their LGBTQ members. In the 1980s, a
handful of same-sex marriages were performed by non-BCA teachers,
including Sarika Dharma of the International Buddhist Meditation Center
in Los Angeles. By the end of the 1990s, American Tibetan, Theravada,
and Zen teachers had all performed the first same-sex marriages in those
respective traditions as well, and Soka Gakkai had gone from seeing
homosexuality as a condition to be cured through Buddhist practice to
performing large numbers of same-sex marriages for its members.
All of this was taking place in a country without legal recognition
for married same-sex couples. They performed those ceremonies even
though they knew the state would not recognize them, because it was the
right thing to do.
Today those marriages are equal to everyone else’s, and there are
signs that marriage equality is gaining acceptance in parts of Buddhist
Asia. Taiwan held its first Buddhist same-sex marriage in 2012, with two
brides in white dresses and veils presided over by a traditional
shaven-headed nun. In Kyoto, Japan, Rev. Kawakami Taka of Shunkoin
temple not only performs same-sex marriages at his historic Rinzai Zen
temple, but has also partnered with local hotel, flower, and similar
vendors to provide wedding packages for same-sex couples arriving from
around the world. Step by step, the movement continues.
On Saturday morning, June 27, I gave keynote address for a seminar at
the New York Buddhist Church, “Embraced by the Heart of Amida Buddha:
The LGBTQ Community and Shin Buddhism.” It’s part of an educational
campaign that the BCA’s Center for Buddhist Education carries out every
year in late June. Speakers talked about their experiences as gay,
lesbian, and transgender Buddhists, and on Sunday we’ll walk in the New
York Pride parade with members of the temple. We had no idea that our
event would occur at such a historic moment, but now we know that we’ll
be marching as an act of pure celebration, rather than hope and
defiance.
Despite the positive record of many sanghas and individuals,
discrimination and ignorance remain widespread in American Buddhism.
That isn’t something that will change overnight with a single Supreme
Court decision, no matter how momentous. But we can genuinely take heart
that American Buddhists have been working for marriage equality for
more than 40 years, and that Buddhists of many traditions spoke out for
equality and contributed to the movement that led to today’s ruling.Jeff Wilson, a
Tricycle contributing
editor, is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and East Asian
Studies at Renison University College, University of Waterloo. His most
recent book is
Mindful America: The Mutual Transformation of Buddhist Meditation and American Culture (Oxford University Press).
Make the jump here to read the full article at Tricycle
