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Gay couples exchange wedding vows at City Hall in San Francisco in June. Gay-rights advocates in Oregon would like to remove the state's constitutional ban on gay marriage through a citizen initiative on the November 2014 ballot.

(AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

By Gilbert Rossing

The last 40 years of advocacy for people who are gay and lesbian set off difficult times for me. My own journey of understanding came about through the most personal of catalysts:

On a March night in 1987, our oldest son — now a Portland business owner — told his mother and me that he was gay.

My first, determined response was to counsel him both as father and pastor, and both academically and biblically, to turn back from this identity. When he tearfully pleaded, “I don’t want to lose you!” I realized that my pontificating was driving him away. I needed to listen and learn.

Gilbert Rossing

When I first wrestled with Scripture passages, I was struck by the disconnectedness between the idolatrous and sexually abusive behaviors the Bible condemned in contrast to the high character and integrity of my son. I began to see that my quickness to judge contradicted the Biblical mandate not to judge, and violated the basic command to love our neighbor — my son — as we love ourselves.

Through ensuing years I developed an understanding not only of my older son, but also my younger son, who is gay as well. I was fortunate to become friends with dozens of devout, godly people who are gay, lesbian and transgender. I saw that we may seem different, but we all have a lot more in common.

When I married my wife, we were caught up in the excitement of early love. But we also wanted to bind ourselves together in loving commitment that would mature through thick and thin. Same-gender couples I know experience the same. My wife and I are grateful now for our 53 years together. Likewise, several same-gender-couple friends have lovingly grown old together, too. One of those couples was recently parted by death. The surviving partner bore grief and loneliness like any straight widow.

Unlike most straight widows, however, she suffered callous indifference toward the loss of her life-long love from both the State and her partner’s family.

Gay and lesbian people have similar values and want to marry for similar reasons. They want to grow old and be there for each other, in good times and bad. They share similar dreams, like building a life together, and similar worries, like making ends meet. Imagine if you’d already been doing the hard work of marriage but were told you could not marry the person you love, or that your relationship didn’t matter when sickness or death came knocking.

Like many people in society over the past 40 years, I am profoundly thankful that I learned to appreciate the men and women who dared to come out of their closets — ordinary folk, professional folk, celebrity folk, teachers, doctors, lawyers, carpenters, plumbers, and so on — so that we could look into their lives, relationships, families, loves and aspirations and see what matchless people of character they are.

Now, they want their love for each other recognized in marriage. Their desire to marry is not much of a leap for me to understand. Knowing many families headed by same-gender couples, including my sons and their partners in particular, I know that marriage is eminently appropriate for them. I believe, as do many other clergy, it is a Godly thing to bless and celebrate the love of same-gender couples.

The freedom to marry in Oregon would allow that to happen. That freedom would also give me the religious freedom to officiate at the wedding of my Portland son and his partner of 15 years, much as I did this year at the Washington marriage of his brother.

Right now there is a petition circulating to put the freedom to marry on the Oregon ballot in November 2014. Freedom means freedom for everyone, and I look forward to the day when all Oregonians have the freedom to marry the person they love.

Gilbert Rossing is a retired Lutheran pastor who is a former minister of Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Portland. He is also a former member of the David Douglas School Board. He is the author of, "Dignity, Dogmatism and Same-Sex Relationships." He and his wife live in Olympia, Wash. They have four grown children.