The Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music (SLCM) of The Episcopal Church recently held a two-and-a-half-day Indaba-style conversation on same-sex marriage June 3-5 at Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral in Kansas City, MO.
The conversation included leaders from across the Anglican Communion, ecumenical partners, and lay and clergy representatives from Episcopal dioceses where civil same-sex marriage is legal.
“The overwhelming feel of the entire gathering was one of openness, love, trust, and joy,” said Kathleen Moore, Diocese of Vermont. “Over the course of just three days, many participants who hailed from different states, countries, and denominations shared the profound closeness they now feel toward one another, and an intent to remain in touch.”
So much for diverse opinions. I thought that rubbing noses said it all.
Rev. Gay Clark Jennings said it all, “Talk about a love story.†🙁
This makes as much sense as the post World War I legislation that outlawed war and thus prevented World War II. You can say WW II didn’t happen. Doesn’t make it so.
I agree with N. T. Wright’s take on this:
[blockquote]I find that sort of stuff chilling, the attempt to change an ideology within a culture by changing the language.
Now, the word “marriage,†for thousands of years and cross-culturally has meant man and woman. Sometimes it’s been one man and more than one woman. Occasionally it’s been one woman and more than one man. There is polyandry as well as polygamy in some societies in some parts of history, but it’s always been male plus female. Simply to say that you can have a woman-plus-woman marriage or a man-plus-man marriage is radically to change that because of the givenness of maleness and femaleness. I would say that without any particular Christian presuppositions at all, just cross-culturally, that’s so.
With Christian or Jewish presuppositions, or indeed Muslim, then if you believe in what it says in Genesis 1 about God making heaven and earth—and the binaries in Genesis are so important—that heaven and earth, and sea and dry land, and so on and so on, and you end up with male and female. It’s all about God making complementary pairs which are meant to work together. The last scene in the Bible is the new heaven and the new earth, and the symbol for that is the marriage of Christ and his church. It’s not just one or two verses here and there which say this or that. It’s an entire narrative which works with this complementarity so that a male-plus-female marriage is a signpost or a signal about the goodness of the original creation and God’s intention for the eventual new heavens and new earth.
If you say that marriage now means something which would allow other such configurations, what you’re saying is actually that when we marry a man and a woman we’re not actually doing any of that stuff. This is just a convenient social arrangement and sexual arrangement and there it is . . . get on with it. It isn’t that that is the downgrading of marriage, it’s something that clearly has gone on for some time which is now poking it’s head above the parapet. If that’s what you thought marriage meant, then clearly we haven’t done a very good job in society as a whole and in the church in particular in teaching about just what a wonderful mystery marriage is supposed to be. Simply at that level, I think it’s a nonsense. It’s like a government voting that black should be white. Sorry, you can vote that if you like, you can pass it by a total majority, but it isn’t actually going to change the reality. [/blockquote]
From here: N. T. WRIGHT ON GAY MARRIAGE
I think anytime people attempt to do things in God’s name against God’s stated will there is grave spiritual danger. I feel very concerned for these people.
Perhaps the group will find time for a reunion someday in the Outer Darkness.
Take an old-fashioned flashlight. Put a battery in it, positive pole first. Put a second battery in it, also positive pole first – so that this positive pole joins with the negative pole of the other battery. Put the cap on, and flip the switch. There will be light.
If you put the batteries in so that the positive poles touch, or the negative poles touch, what happens when you flip the switch?
Ah…this group would suggest that the problem is the light bulb.
The blathering seems to have excluded “straight” adult males. Why would I want to bring my family into this cr@p?
It is like Love Story in that you never have to say that you are sorry.