When the Supreme Court’s June 26 ruling declaring same-sex marriage a constitutional right hit the street, the SCOTUS steps erupted in jubilant, flag-waving celebration. But one woman stood amidst the throng sobbing, “Goodbye, America.”
GOODBYE AMERICA!
Posted by Christine Weick on Friday, June 26, 2015
It was nearly 100 degrees in the nation’s capital on the day, three days before the gay marriage fight came to a close, that I met her, a lone woman holding watch with her Biblical “warning.”
You’ve seen her before.
Christine Weick’s unmistakable Michiganese hit me as soon as I introduced myself.
“You sound familiar,” I said, and she quickly volunteered her identity.
“I’m Christine with a ‘C,’” she said. “You probably saw me in the Monster energy drink video.”
Ah, yes, the video in which she broke down the Satanic imagery on a soft-drink can. And then there’s the time she grabbed the mic at Texas Muslim Capitol Day to invoke the name of Jesus.
I’d seen her in DC weeks earlier, although I hadn’t recognized her as I walked past in the rain. I’d been struck then by the image—a lone culture warrior ignored by friend and foe alike—and when I spotted her again in the scorching heat on June 23, I decided to stop and talk.
I wanted to speak with the sort of person who would take a solitary, public stand on an issue that much of the country—pro- and anti-gay marriage alike—views as settled, even before a SCOTUS ruling made it seemingly final. She seemed the type who would still wave a Stark banner after the Red Wedding.
Call her brave, call her bigoted, call her crazy, Weick isn’t afraid to be unpopular, and she’s fairly pleasant in person.
June 23 was the final day of her 60-day vigil in front of the Supreme Court, although she stuck around until the final ruling on gay marriage.
Her public stand is a ministry, she said, based on preaching love.
“There has not been one day when I haven’t been able to share the Gospel in love to a homosexual or someone who agrees with homosexuality,” she said.
But she deals with ugliness as well.
“On the other hand, there has not been one day where I have not been called a name or I’ve had the middle finger at me,” she noted. “Some days are worse than others.”
She used a megaphone for one week before ditching it, preferring one-on-one interactions with passers-by who want to talk to her.
“It doesn’t show love when I have to, ‘La!,’” Weick said, miming a megaphone. “It makes it look like I’m yelling.”
As we spoke, she got a chance to engage in that one-on-one ministry she prefers when a self-professed lesbian Christian pastor, New Mexican Vangie Chavez, stopped by to argue that Jesus was against divorce, not committed same-sex couples. Weick disagreed, and neither woman seemed to make headway.
The lesbian pastor notwithstanding, Weick said she has been struck by the overwhelming lack of pro-gay-marriage advocates on the Supreme Court steps over the last two months. She’d come equipped with poles to raise her sign above the throng she’d expected would try to block her, but she hadn’t needed to whip them out. But her fellow followers of Jesus were also conspicuously absent.
“Where are all the Christians?” Weick said she kept asking herself. She’s almost always the only protester out on the Supreme Court steps. Her question prompted another: Who are the true Christians in these times?
“My favorites are Baptists,” Weick said, adding, “the Church of Christ is great.”
She says, generally speaking, she’s not one to discriminate among denominations, although despite the Roman Catholic Church’s longstanding opposition to same-sex marriage, she’s not too bullish on the Church of Peter.
“The pope is kind of wishy-washy,” Weick said.
Would Francis change Catholic doctrine on gay sex and marriage?
“Sure, he already has,” she responded, though she couldn’t provide an example of this. “The Bible’s very strong on homosexual marriage, he’s, ‘Who am I to judge?’ The homosexual community applauded him, ‘Bravo for this man!’ And when you have Elton John going, ‘Yes!’ we have an issue. [Pope Francis] is the leader of the largest religion in the world, and I feel he is starting to water things down.”
Whatever the Catholic failings in her eyes, Weick holds even more disdain for Christian churches that have embraced gay marriage.
“I will not be found in an Episcopalian church,” she affirmed.
Before the court’s ruling, Weick said she wouldn’t be swayed by its decision.
“God’s law trumps anything the Supreme Court could come up with,” she said, citing Roe v. Wade (when SCOTUS “threw God under the bus”) as another illegitimate decision. “I don’t have the right to go kill my child in the womb just because the court says I can.”
Is she worried that churches could soon be ordered to perform gay marriages?
“I hope it comes to that because you know what it will do? It will bring out the true church,” Weick claimed, saying churches that weather the coming “trial” will be stronger for it.
Weick’s post-ruling destination: California, where she plans to protest at Bohemian Grove, a place where she says “the elite of the world, men only,” will be worshipping and making sacrifices to a huge owl.
“I can’t make ‘em stop,” Weick says of the various causes she opposes. “I [take public stands] to make you aware of something so that you make a choice what you wanna do.”
Whether you quit drinking Monster or don’t, stop supporting gay marriage or don’t, worship a giant owl or not, “That’s between you and God,” Weick says. “All I can do is warn you.”
Her message, ultimately ignored, to the Supreme Court: “Please do not do this.”
As our interview wound down, Weick ran through her options.
“What am I gonna do, go in there with a gun and start shooting?” she asked.
She considered the idea.
“That’d make ‘em stop, cause they wouldn’t be able to do it,” she said, before reconsidering.
“That is against the law, for a reason,” she continued. “That is going over a line on my end. I have to allow the choice that God gave each one of us.”
SCOTUS exercised that choice in its 5-4 same-sex marriage ruling, and Weick’s immediate reaction online was brief: “My heart breaks.”
For those who would label her a protester, Weick had a point of clarification.
“I am not protesting anything,” Weick said. “I am standing up for what is right.”
In her day-after-the-ruling Facebook post, Weick reaffirmed the central reasons she’d made herself a public spectacle for 63 days taking an increasingly unpopular stand: love, for God and her neighbor.
Yesterday was a rough one for me as it was for anyone who loves the Bible and America. My reaction surprised me. After…
Posted by Christine Weick on Saturday, June 27, 2015
“One lesbian from DC approached and hugged me [during the June 26 celebration],” Weick wrote. “I remember her holding my face in her hands, as she said, ‘Remember me? We talked quite awhile. Seeing your tears right now, makes me believe you are genuine. You do love me.’”
Weick, the legally defeated surrounded by a sea of victors, responded in perhaps the only way she could.
“I sobbed on her shoulder.”
