The CofE has refused to countenance any form of official liturgical recognition for civil partnerships; has sought special exemptions from human rights and equalities legislation in order to continue discriminating against openly gay clergy or gay employees; has repeatedly restated its condemnation of all sexual relations outside heterosexual marriage; and has formally debarred even celibate gay clergy from becoming bishops.
Most recently, the bishops of the CofE have set themselves against government proposals to extend civil marriage to include same-sex couples. Their opposition is above all a public and political stance which is intended to maintain ecclesiastical unity, particularly within the Anglican communion. About half the world’s Anglicans are African, and the majority of them are in violently homophobic countries whose churches back harsh punishments against homosexuals, right up to the death penalty.
These are the Anglican provinces which the current policy is seeking to appease and keep on board, while the American and Canadian Anglican churches that now openly bless gay unions and consecrate gay bishops are condemned for daring to treat gay people equally.
Please keep comments on this thread focused on the content of the preface; thank you–KSH.
“However, the official distinction of terms signifies and helps perpetuate a distinction in status: if marriage is the gold standard, civil partnership, though analogous to marriage, will always be seen as something less.â€
Apples and Oranges. Let the “Apple†(gay covenants) declare *itself* the Gold Standard. Nothing preventing that. Come up with a very special terminology to mirror the neologisms of ‘Gay’, ‘Transgender’ and so forth. Let the Apple be an Apple and the Orange and Orange.
In a Christian context, we simply have a different set of governing conceptions. Creation, gender in the Garden, Israel as Bride, Christ at Cana, the adaptation of household codes in the letters of Paul for the New Humanity in Christ (see Colossians 3), the teaching of Christ regarding marriage – this ‘thick description’ will remain no matter what adjustments are rallied around in late modernity for same-sex couples. If Gay couples want blessings and also ‘marriages,’ they will have them if the law so allows. John says as much. They will simply call their partnerships marriages anyway.
What they cannot expect others to agree to is that a word that functions within a thick description of “male/female he made them†and the entire Biblical narrative and the classical tradition will suddenly apply to something else *which the church will bless and call that, too.*
Even a TEC confected ‘provisional’ rite does not go there. How it will seek to get there is a story yet to unfold. Even the TEC theological committee argued that the same-sex community could not look toward Christian *marriage* to satisfy its unique identity.
This is clearly not written to those who disagree or wonder about the moral status of homosexual acts, it’s more just a shriek of outrage at the Anglican Church for its equivocation and hesitation on what he presumes to be its inevitable path. Even to the extent that he sees the Episcopal Church as some sort of exemplar! How did the church come to this level of spiritual blindness?
A very deep theological study of the issue. “Impulse.” Deep.
“About half the world’s Anglicans are African, and the majority of them are in violently homophobic countries whose churches back harsh punishments against homosexuals, right up to the death penalty.”
Actually, very few (if any) churches back “harsh punishments” against homosexuals, particularly the death penalty.
It is surely not unreasonable to point out that most Muslim countries have extremely harsh punishments against homosexuality, and this appears to be with the full support of Islam. Yet most of the liberals in the west who criticise the Anglican churches for not agreeing to same sex marriage, also support greater latitude for the practice of Islam in western countries. Surely this is a far greater danger to homosexuals than church opposition to same sex blessings?