Last week, bishops of the Church of England, issued a statement on the new opposite-sex civil partnerships.
All they could say, when it boiled down to it, was: ‘no sex before or outside marriage.’ They added that those in same or opposite sex civil partnerships should live their lives as ‘sexually abstinent friends’ and those in same sex marriages should not be having sex. The bishops of the Church are, in my experience, thoughtful, wise and compassionate women and men. But many of us are embarrassed and angered by the tone of what we read. The response of many clergy in the Church was to, metaphorically, shout at the telly.
I think it’s wrong and naive to ask for and to expect abstinence from couples. It’s wrong because there is no evidence that sex in other forms of committed relationship are harmful: the texts of the Bible assume a very different meaning to sex than it currently possesses….
‘Since I became a vicar in 1997, I have married over 200 couples.
‘Of these, I can recall just one who had decided to refrain from sex before marriage.’
Canon Simon Butler for @MetroUKhttps://t.co/c3B5raFtZy
— Platform by Metro.co.uk (@MetroOpinion) January 26, 2020