A group of prominent Church of England clergy yesterday called for the right to solemnise civil partnerships in church.
They backed a change to Harriet Harman’s Equality Bill that would allow religious buildings to host them. At present they must be registered in secular surroundings, like civil weddings.
The campaign deepens the difficulties of Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who is to trying to avoid a worldwide Anglican rift over gay rights in the Church.
This is pretty silly. The “prominent” clergy are one soon-to-be-retiring bishop, several retired bishops, and the usual gaggle of hangers-on like Jeffrey John.
I thought this looked familiar:
[blockquote]The new Equality Bill could mean CofE clergy sympathetic to gay rights could use the law to perform civil partnerships even if church rules forbade it.
Many clergy let divorcees marry in their churches before the CofE allowed them to do so eight years ago.[/blockquote]
It was. I had read the much the same thing on MadPriest. Can it be that the Daily Mail is using the MadPriest’s comments as a news source [entertaining as he is]. How hilarious!
Talk about a ‘Dog Bites Man!’ story. This is news?