by Caitlin La Ruffa
As we await the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges in these final days, I am carried back to the day of the oral arguments just a few months ago. Supporters both of traditional marriage and of same-sex marriage gathered at the steps, cheering for our respective causes from dueling podiums, while the lawyers duked it out in the courtroom. Chants and songs, speeches and slogans filled the air as citizens on both sides of this hotly debated question made their cases.
One particular slogan stuck with me: “Love can’t wait.” Every fifteen minutes or so this chant would erupt from across the crowded steps, led by a speaker on the opposite podium.
But isn’t this exactly what love calls us to do, over and over again? It tests our patience. It tries us. And it makes us wait—over and over and over again.
“Love. Can’t. Wait.” It may make for a catchy chant, but in doing so it only serves to highlight the chasm that lies between the two competing conceptions of love in our culture at large – extending far beyond the scope of the question before the court that day. In one conception, love is a feeling, a passion, a desire—one so great that to choose not to be guided by it would be harmful to the lover. It’s something we don’t control, but rather that controls us. Like all human emotions, it is fickle, and wants what it wants right here, right now.
In other, love is not a feeling. Rather, it is a deliberate act of the will that seeks the good of the beloved. This is the kind of love St. Paul wrote about when he instructed the Corinthians that love is patient, among other things. It’s not something that chooses us, but that we choose – day in and day out – for the sake, not of the lover, but of the beloved. It’s the kind of love a husband shows his wife of sixty years as he tends to her in her hospital bed. It’s the kind of love a mother shows as she patiently awaits the arrival of the child in her womb. It’s the kind of love A. A. Milne described in the voice of the ever-incisive cultural critic Winnie the Pooh when he observed, “Love is taking a few steps backward maybe even more…to give way to the happiness of the person you love.”
Whatever happens after all our waiting, after the decisions have been announced, and the fanfare of the crowds on both sides has died down, we still have our work cut out for us. Our task has been made clear: It’s up to our generation to transform “Love can’t wait” into “Love is patient.” It may be an uphill battle, but I can think of few worthier causes.
Who’s in?
Caitlin La Ruffa is the director of the Love and Fidelity Network.
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