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Gay marriage is front page news this week because of the Supreme Court cases involving California’s ban on it and the challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act that denies federal benefits and protections to gay couples. In light of this hot topic I want to share a story about my 95 year old mother (one she’s heard me tell before).

A couple of years ago she moved to North Carolina to live with my brother and his wife. Last spring North Carolina had an anti-gay marriage measure on the ballot. As was predictable for North Carolina, it passed. My mother went to the polls to vote. Now this is a woman who is very conservative religiously. She reads the Bible daily and listens to Charles Stanley of First Baptist Church in Atlanta every Sunday via the television. My mother knows that my brother and I are as liberal as they come on most issues, especially gay marriage. She often says to me in her wonderful southern drawl, “I don’t care what you say, Jan. I believe what I believe.”

Joy and I were visiting in Carolina soon after the measure passed. I was sure I knew how Mother had voted, but I just had to raise the subject anyway. As we were sitting around the dinner table I brought it up. “So, Mother,” I asked, “how did you vote on the marriage amendment.” Boy, did I get a surprise in her response. “Well,” she said, hesitating a bit, “I voted against it.” I was stunned. “You voted against it?” I asked incredulously. “You don’t believe in gay marriage. Why did you vote against?” Her reply was simple and uncomplicated. “No, I don’t believe in it, but I don’t think I have the right to tell someone else who they can marry.”

My mother has proven many times through the years that she is wiser than her sons, and this time was no exception. More than that, she is an example of why labels seldom tell the whole story about anyone. When it comes to faith she would be accurately described as a fundamentalist, but she has never displayed the kind of judgmentalism so many others have. Indeed, growing up she welcomed anyone into our home, including gay friends, treating them as she treated my brothers and me. And while we lived in a segregated Virginia where racism flowed like the James River I never heard my mother (or my father) ever use a racial epithet in our home or anywhere else. On top of that, in spite of her religious fundamentalism my mother is a staunch Democrat. She voted for Barack Obama both times, and every Democrat before him. She simply does not fit any single mold or label.

We’ve talked a lot about gay marriage over the years and have never had the same perspective on it, yet we ended up voting the same way when we faced the issue in our respective states. That was a reminder to me that the real measure of a person is who they are and not just what views they hold. My mother and I have never allowed our differences over issues to become more important than our relationship with one another. We are family before anything else. That is something ideologues on the right and the left don’t seem to care about. I think it’s because they are seldom honest about themselves with themselves.

Sadly, this is as true in churches as the larger culture. There are conservative churches that would not genuinely welcome me into their congregation and there are progressive churches that would not genuinely welcome my mother. Small minds that demand agreement on and/or support for particular views on issues to the point of drawing a line between people can be found in churches as well as anywhere else. But churches never believe this about themselves. They always think they are more tolerant and accepting and less dogmatic than they actually are.

That conversation last year reminded me again of the fact that my mother is a pretty amazing person, not least because she has always been able to believe what she believes without insisting everyone else agree with her. I confess I have not always been as magnanimous. But this much I can say. I would never want to be in a church that did not welcome her, regardless of what she believes, and I am quite sure she would never want to be in one that did not welcome me, regardless of what I believe. My fear is that the number that would truly welcome both of us is getting smaller and smaller.