A key committee voted overwhelmingly Monday to start putting together blessings to be used in same-sex marriages, the church’s official newspaper reported.
Separately, the House of Bishops voted by a wide margin to allow gays and lesbians to become bishops, Episcopal Life reported.
Both measures must be approved by the church’s General Convention before taking effect, but expert Mark Silk said there is “little reason” to think the changes will not “sail through.”
“They basically decided to move forward on all fronts with regularizing the status of gays and lesbians within the church,” said Silk, director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Connecticut.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/07/14/episcopal.gays/
(as posted at the backup blog, July 14th)
Comments from the backup blog:
David Hein said…
“Both measures must be approved by the church’s General Convention before taking effect, but expert Mark Silk said there is ‘little reason’ to think the changes will not ‘sail through.'”
Well, yes. I’ve always thought that 2003 lacked a certain logic. In brief: not to approve SSBs now would mean approving non-celibate gay bishops living in sin.
As any number of people pointed out in 2003, logic dictated that TEC first approve SSBs, and then gay bishops–if it thought, as it apparently did, that gay partnerships were morally and theologically equivalent to heterosexual partnerships (i.e., marriage).
But, as participants at GC 2003 noted, notwithstanding the logic of the matter, politics said that, at the time, SSBs (i.e., authorized liturgies for) were a bridge too far.
3:15 PM
Blogger John (Ad Orientem) said…
This is all very sad. My prayers go out to those Christian faithful still in TEC.
Under the mercy,
John
4:22 PM