Jephthah's Daughter

Jephtha’s daughter

Do you remember the Bible story of Jephthas’s daughter?  (Judges 11:30-40)  Jephthah had vowed that if the Lord helped him win the battle of Ammon, that when he returned home, he would offer to God as a sacrifice whatever came to greet him from his house.  Well, did he think it would be his dog?  Or that God would be satisfied with a dog as a sacrifice for giving Jephthah this big victory?  But of course, it was his daughter, his only child, who came out to welcome him home “with timbrels and with dances.”    And Jephthah was saddened, but had to keep his vow to God.    Jephthah allowed his daughter to grieve for two months, but then fulfilled his vow, and sacrificed her to the Lord.

I don’t know why I thought of this story often during the Bush/Cheney administration, when Cheney, while not disowning his daughter, Mary, for being a lesbian, could not support LGBT issues.  And when she had a baby, he and his wife had their picture taken with their grandchild, but not with Mary and her partner.  Sacrificing her to his ambition.  Then, even worse, was Alan Keyes, who, after losing senatorial election to Barack Obama in 2004, came home to Maryland to discover that his daughter was lesbian, then threw her out of the house and refused to pay her college tuition anymore.   Sadly, we know he was not alone in that attitude and action.

Now there is Sen Rob Portman, previously anti-gay rights, even co-sponsored the DOMA legislation, but now has had a change of heart upon discovering that his son is gay.  Though it took him two years after this discovery to come out in favor of marriage equality, he is still the only Republican in the Senate to do so.    While his change of heart and mind is welcome, would that he could warm the hearts of his fellow Republicans.  (But we shouldn’t forget, there are a number of Democratic legislators who do not support marriage equality.)  Say, of Speaker John Boehner, who has said that he would not approve marriage equality even if his own child was gay.  Still, no one is quarreling with his right to his own beliefs, but why does it follow that his beliefs should be the law of the land?

We are all Jephthahs, and our children are all Jephthah’s children.  They trust us implicitly, and though our hearts may be wicked, they come to greet us with “timbrels and dancing.”    And yet we continue to sacrifice them, in the name of our God, in the cold, implacable, misbegotten belief that we have a right to impose our religious convictions on others, indeed, to make our beliefs the law of the land.  And to deny our children their hearts’ longing.