Monday, December 29, 2008
Bring on the bride & bride
When I began regularly visiting Ocean Grove NJ in the 1970's, strolling down there from Asbury Park, two things about it were obvious:
1. Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association was a theocratic quasi-government that routinely (& arrogantly) overstepped the boundaries between church & state just because it always had.
2. Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association didn't give a damn what happened off-season in Ocean Grove when the tents weren't pitched & there were no paying customers at the Great Auditorium.
It was promoted as "God's Square Mile at the Jersey Shore," but Ocean Grove is a part of Neptune Township, & the OGCMA ran a religious-themed amusement park that shut down at summer's end just like the rides on Casino Pier at Seaside Heights.
As next-door neighbor Asbury Park fell apart, Ocean Grove's summer business declined. The old hotels & guest houses always had vacancy signs. Off-season, the Grove was known for its cheap rooms & apartments, & quaint but shabby cottages. The small downtown had few attractions. It was a charming but sickly little place.
Then, oddly, as Asbury Park literally collapsed altogether, Ocean Grove began coming back to life, year-round. Lovely shops & restaurants opened. Cottages were bought & renovated. You didn't have to be sophisticated to see that gays & lesbians had fallen in love with Ocean Grove. Their enthusiasm had helped pull Cape May City out of the doldrums. Ocean Grove was a relative bargain. Home buyers don't purchase the property under the cottages - the Camp Association holds that, but they do possess the houses. The OGCMA ban on Sunday driving had been overturned in court - it didn't own the streets or the beach, & the religion police no longer hassled residents for weeding their gardens on Sundays.
To this day the OGCMA pretends there are no homosexuals on its small slice of the Jersey shore. Just a bunch of friendly, antique-collecting bachelors & spinsters moved in, & out of the goodness of their hearts fixed up the neighborhood, became permanent residents, hung flowerpots on their porches, raised the value of every structure, detached Ocean Grove from the misery on the other side of Wesley Lake, turning the place into popular destination for eating & shopping.
OGCMA made the mistake of accepting Green Acres funds to improve some of its public access property, such as a small open-sided structure in the middle of the boardwalk called The Pavilion. Then it rented this pavilion to anyone for weddings, gospel sings, whatever. Until a local lesbian couple tried to reserve it - off-season - for a civil union ceremony.
No one is disputing that the OGCMA has full control over the Great Auditorium & the various small indoor chapels, & the "tent city." But it has to surrender its proprietary moral attitude toward the boardwalk just as it had to open up the roads & beaches. OGCMA made a mistake it can't take back, treating The Pavilion as a public landmark while renting it to anyone & any organization. Then a pair of lesbians tried to put a deposit on it, & not even for when they might have offended the straight-laced Methodists who somehow never notice that their beloved Ocean Grove has become a sort of gay old town & is better for it.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
1. Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association was a theocratic quasi-government that routinely (& arrogantly) overstepped the boundaries between church & state just because it always had.
2. Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association didn't give a damn what happened off-season in Ocean Grove when the tents weren't pitched & there were no paying customers at the Great Auditorium.
It was promoted as "God's Square Mile at the Jersey Shore," but Ocean Grove is a part of Neptune Township, & the OGCMA ran a religious-themed amusement park that shut down at summer's end just like the rides on Casino Pier at Seaside Heights.
As next-door neighbor Asbury Park fell apart, Ocean Grove's summer business declined. The old hotels & guest houses always had vacancy signs. Off-season, the Grove was known for its cheap rooms & apartments, & quaint but shabby cottages. The small downtown had few attractions. It was a charming but sickly little place.
Then, oddly, as Asbury Park literally collapsed altogether, Ocean Grove began coming back to life, year-round. Lovely shops & restaurants opened. Cottages were bought & renovated. You didn't have to be sophisticated to see that gays & lesbians had fallen in love with Ocean Grove. Their enthusiasm had helped pull Cape May City out of the doldrums. Ocean Grove was a relative bargain. Home buyers don't purchase the property under the cottages - the Camp Association holds that, but they do possess the houses. The OGCMA ban on Sunday driving had been overturned in court - it didn't own the streets or the beach, & the religion police no longer hassled residents for weeding their gardens on Sundays.
To this day the OGCMA pretends there are no homosexuals on its small slice of the Jersey shore. Just a bunch of friendly, antique-collecting bachelors & spinsters moved in, & out of the goodness of their hearts fixed up the neighborhood, became permanent residents, hung flowerpots on their porches, raised the value of every structure, detached Ocean Grove from the misery on the other side of Wesley Lake, turning the place into popular destination for eating & shopping.
OGCMA made the mistake of accepting Green Acres funds to improve some of its public access property, such as a small open-sided structure in the middle of the boardwalk called The Pavilion. Then it rented this pavilion to anyone for weddings, gospel sings, whatever. Until a local lesbian couple tried to reserve it - off-season - for a civil union ceremony.
NJ rules against church group in gay rights caseThis doesn't settle the matter; an administrative judge has to decide on a "remedy."
The New Jersey Division on Civil Rights said its investigation found that the refusal of the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association to rent the oceanfront spot to the couple for their same-sex union in March 2007 violated the public accommodation provisions of the state's Law Against Discrimination.
No one is disputing that the OGCMA has full control over the Great Auditorium & the various small indoor chapels, & the "tent city." But it has to surrender its proprietary moral attitude toward the boardwalk just as it had to open up the roads & beaches. OGCMA made a mistake it can't take back, treating The Pavilion as a public landmark while renting it to anyone & any organization. Then a pair of lesbians tried to put a deposit on it, & not even for when they might have offended the straight-laced Methodists who somehow never notice that their beloved Ocean Grove has become a sort of gay old town & is better for it.
Labels: Asbury Park, jersey shore
