Minnesota Kicks-Off Reimagining Valentine’s Day

Rev. Meg Riley is Campaign Director of the Standing on the Side of Love Campaign and a Minnesota resident.

Tomorrow, early in the morning! That’s when the Minnesota Standing on the Side of Love event takes place, early in the line up of over 100 such events across the nation which will unfold through the weekend!

Here, SSL is joining a broad interfaith rally at the Capitol Rotunda to encourage legislators to support marriage equality, so that Minnesotans don’t need to take buses to Iowa in order to get legally married. We want Minnesota to be the progressive beacon we know it is, and to dare to take action on behalf of equality under the law for all of its citizens.

I’m thrilled to join such national figures as Bishop Yvette Flunder (City of Refuge UCC), Rev. Elder Nancy Wilson (Moderator of the Metropolitan Community Church), and other religious and elected officials, representing Standing on the Side of Love. I’m scheming to have the banner there and highly visible. I’m thinking through what to say in my three minutes in the sun!

I love all of the ripples that spread out over the waters from this one event. Ripples which extend out to hold a wide variety of religious people, who share the same conviction about marriage equality. Ripples which extend out to a national day of love and justice which 100 other religious communities are committing themselves to in a wide variety of arenas, and even to Uganda, where people of faith will stand on the side of love in the face of draconian legislation against glbt people.

In such moments, when we experience being one people, I feel that I am living my religious mission. We all know that the forces of hate and fear are strong. Here’s our chance to know that the force of love, when we stand on the side of love, is even stronger.