My Testimony on Marriage Equality

I spent the entire day yesterday in Concord at the State House as a sea of red dressed supporters testified to keep Marriage Equality from being overturned in NH. Here is my submitted testimony:

February 17th, 2011

Honorable Members of the House Judiciary Committee:

My name is The Rev. Kurt C. Wiesner, and I am the rector of All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Littleton, NH.

As a minster, it is my honor and privilege to play a particular role in the covenant of marriage: I declare, on behalf of my religious community, the presence of God in the lives of two people as they publicly commit themselves to one another.

Like all ministers, I am not required by New Hampshire law to do this for anyone. I choose to bless marriages based on a couple's commitment to a lifelong journey together, and by their connection to our faith community.

I proudly do this in New Hampshire, reassured that our state provides equal protection for couples under the law: the right to make personal decisions together, the right to visit and care for each other when they are sick, and the legal rights entitled to a couple by the commitment of marriage.

Do not go back to a time where we withhold the right to love, marry, and form a family from two consenting adults based on a particular image of marriage.

Personally, my wife Darlene and I have found our marriage renewed and strengthened by witnessing gay and lesbian couples fight so hard for the right of marriage: a right that far too many people of my generation consider old-fashioned, stifling, and easily ended by divorce.

Undoing Marriage Equality would diminish, not strengthen, the covenant my wife and I have together.

I humbly ask that you reject the three bills that seek to end Marriage Equality.

Thank you.

(The Rev.) Kurt C. Wiesner

Littleton, NH