Wow. This downloadable paper on why gay marriage is part of God’s plan for more freedom and equality should light up the ChatteringMind boards.

It’s written by a young, Episcopal, black, gay lawyer named Otis Gaddis III who additionally serves as an assisting academic coordinator at the Institute for Progressive Christianity. Gaddis writes:

“…God is bringing into the present the future God has planned for us, a future in which there is no hierarchy and no outsider even to the point of humanity enjoying mystical communion, in social equality with God. This movement is the building of the Kingdom of God. That Kingdom of Equality by definition is opposed to the conservative project of maintaining the past and its hierarchies.

“Taking the witness of gay marriage seriously means realizing that the Holy God of Christianity is actually bringing God’s idealized future for humanity into the present, right now. Moreover, the advent of gay marriage in our social history is giving us a glimpse of the kind of relationship God wants with us, one of mystical communion in social equality, a relationship of love. God’s people are the people that are enacting in the present, as best they can, the vision of the Kingdom of God. Gay marriage is a sign to the world that God is again intervening to bring the Kingdom of God more and more into the present. For those who accept this sign, God presents a challenge: anyone who hears the voice of the Spirit in the explicit inclusion of gay couples into the concept of marriage is obligated to gather up the truth of this witness in their own lives whether they are gay or straight.”

There’s a whole lot more. Download the entire paper from this web page.