Below is the text of what I will share at the State Capital at noon.  I’ll be speaking at an interfaith rally advocating equal rights for all God’s children; rights which include marriage of same gender loving couples.

My name is Elizabeth Macaulay and I serve as Lead Pastor at Richfield United Methodist Church in South Minneapolis.

I’m here today because I long to live in a state where hearts are not broken by strictures and structures that  deny life and love fully lived.

My father, the Rev. George Mackenzie Macaulay III was a UCC pastor.  He was a man committed to the justice and compassion vision of Jesus and he worked in the movement for decades.  He sought to live the wisdom taught by Jesus and all great religious teachers:  practice compassion, celebrate and honor the spark of the Holy that dwells within each, love your neighbor as yourself.

My father died young of a massive heart attack – her heart was broken – because for decades she lived the desert reality of being transgender in a world that could not, would not know the fullness of her beauty. She was that terrifying and beautiful thing in this world:  a God creation not bound by human constructs.  She was a God creation fractured by human constructs.

Her heart broke.

And mine continues to break.

I’m here because I believe that the heart of the Holy celebrates love; love lived, love practiced, love celebrated through the wild courage it takes to join heart, one with another.

And while our God longs love, our world, our nation, our state, our communities, our homes are being inundated with messages and movements stirring up fear of love lived by same-gender-loving couples and fear breaks hearts and it breaks families and

we are capable of so much more.

Jesus taught that he came that all might have life, and have it abundantly.

I no longer get to share life with my father.

But I do get to live and work and preach and believe that in the years to come, no more daughters in Minnesota will have parents die of broken hearts.

All families who live the language of love are sacred gift.  Scripture is alive, leading us to live the ways of love.

God knows we live with an awareness of what it means to live in a frozen land.

God calls us to be people of awakening and living hearts.

Let us celebrate as Minnesotans the life-giving power of love.

Let us pray and vote and live into being a state where hearts break no more.