So what's his story:
Same-sex couples from around the world come to Kyoto to marry at
Shunkoin temple
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The Huffington Post (Japan) continues his story:
(Note: I've highlighted the first sentence because that's the crux of the problem. So many Christians really have no concept of human rights.)
"We mustn't
act as if it's all right to cast the LGBT community aside because they're a
minority group," says priest at Japan's Shunkoin temple.
Same-sex marriages are not legal in Japan. However, there is a Japanese Buddhist templewhere
lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and members of other sexual
minority groups can wed: the Shunkoin temple in Hanazono, Kyoto. Same-sex
couples from around the world visit the temple.
How did the Shunkoin temple start holding LGBT wedding ceremonies?
HuffPost Japan posed the question to the Rev. Taka Zenryu Kawakami, deputy head
priest at Shunkoin.
The priest admits he was prejudiced against the LGBT community when he
was younger. "I am not gay myself, and there were no LGBT people around me
when I was growing up. The old me was prejudiced against sexual
minorities," he said.
Kawakami was born into a family that has produced Shunkoin chief priests
for generations. After graduating from the Hanazono School (which is affiliated
with Rinzai Buddhism's Myoshinji temple), he studied English at Rice University
in Texas, and then enrolled at Arizona State University.
"One day I was having tea with a friend, and a person walked past
who you could tell at a glance was gay. I made a discriminatory comment. My
friend replied, 'I'm gay, too. Is that the way you feel about me, Taka?’”
Kawakami recounted.
“When he said that, I remembered being discriminated against as an Asian
person when I traveled in the South," he said. "Especially because I
had been the victim of prejudice myself, I felt terrible shame, and I
completely changed my position. As I changed, my friends began to open up to me
about the fact that they were gay or lesbian."
Kawakami majored in religious studies and psychology at Arizona State,
and lived in the U.S. for approximately eight years. In 2004, he returned to
Japan to start his ascetic training at the Zuiganji temple in Miyagi
prefecture, since having experience as a priest would help prepare him for
graduate school.
In 2006, Kawakami finished his training and returned to Shunkoin, where
he had the opportunity to give an American acquaintance zazen meditation classes
in English. Word got out about the classes, and tourists started calling. In
2007, Kawakami officially became deputy head priest at Shunkoin, and started
offering meditation classes to more and more English speakers.
The first person to ask about same-sex wedding ceremonies was a woman
from Spain who had visited Shunkoin many times to learn about zazen meditation.
"'Can you hold wedding ceremonies here?' she asked me,"
Kawakami recalled. "I told her, ‘Yes, we can.' Then she said, 'I have one
more question. My partner is a woman.' And I responded, 'That's fine.'"
Kawakami looked over the sacred texts of Mahayana Buddhism, and
confirmed that such a wedding would not contradict scripture. He expected to be
criticized for holding the ceremony, but was also sure that his willingness to
hold same-sex wedding ceremonies at the temple would support the LGBT cause by
paving the way for more acceptance in Japanese society.
"The reasons why LGBT people are not accepted are different in the
West than in Japan," Kawakami said. "In Japan, there is no religious
pressure from groups like Christian conservatives. So you don’t see the same
sort of strong opposition as in the West. On the other hand, in Japan,
there is an underlying pressure to conform, a sense of ‘We are all the same; we
are all heterosexual’ -- and that makes it hard to live as an LGBT
person."
"I thought that if places such as my temple could show that we
actively accept same-sex marriage, it would draw more attention to the
problem," he added.
In 2010, the Spanish couple held a public wedding ceremony.
In the spring of 2014, Shunkoin partnered with Hotel Granvia Kyoto to
offer Buddhist wedding package tours for LGBT couples. Five couples signed up
that year. So far in 2015, eight couples have come to pledge their love,
Kawakami said. Six of the couples were from abroad, and two of the couples were
Japanese -- two men, and two women.
"A lot of the couples are women. This was the first year we had a
couple where both individuals were Japanese, which made me happy. I hope we get
even more couples like them in the future," Kawakami said.
Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/shunkoin-temple-gay-marriage_56290990e4b0aac0b8fbeb01
