Marriage equality for LGBT people is now firmly on the agenda, including marriage in church

Reports of the meeting held on Tuesday afternoon in a House of Commons Committee room with Lynne Featherstone MP, Equalities Minister, and five civil servants have been issued by Peter Tatchell and Pink News. Also present were Ben Summerskill, chief executive of Stonewall, the Rev Sharon Ferguson of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, Paul Martin of the Lesbian and Gay Foundation Manchester, and myself.

The meeting was the first of a series of private meetings being held this week by the government's equalities office with interested parties to to look at possible next steps for civil partnerships including the possibility of holding civil partnerships for gay couples in church and the option of extending civil marriage to same-sex couples. I don’t know whether the government’s consultation extends to meeting with Christian leaders opposed to marriage equality in church for LGBT people though Lynne Featherstone is reported as acknowledging that any consultation would take into account the views of those who are vehemently opposed to equal marriage.

Four of the five LGBT leaders present argued strongly for full marriage equality. Stonewall is not opposed to marriage equality but does not see it as a priority.

My focus was on the Church of England, which as the established church with bishops in the House of Lords and strong conservative lobby groups, has undue influence on the progress of legal reforms that affect the lives of LGBT people in general and Christians in particular.

The meeting attempted to identify the difference between civil partnerships and marriage and why we were so adamant that we wanted equality. The legal provisions are effectively exactly the same. There are two practical differences: in marriage, vows are exchanged whereas the registration of a civil partnership requires a register to be signed; and civil partnerships cannot be contracted in religious buildings. LGBT people want the freedom to commit ourselves to one another in the same way by the exchange of vows and rings – in church.

The real difference lies in people’s perception. They habitually call civil partnerships ‘marriage’ and this is what they perceive them to be in all but name. Families, friends, colleagues and members of their congregation see gay couples getting married, with all the significance of meaning that attaches to marriage.

The nature of marriage has already been significantly reconstructed by cultural, social and religious changes in the past 50 years and has always been an institution subject to revision and change. The Church of England has changed the nature of marriage radically by accepting that couples have the freedom to use contraception and to remarry in church following divorce.

Feminists and some LGBT people do not want to adopt the values of marriage, seeing it as indelibly patriarchal or embodying commitments they do not want to make. LGBT people will inevitably further deconstruct and reconstruct the nature of marriage. I would argue that Christian LGBT people want marriage to be a covenant relationship focused on the loving relationship between a couple who intend life-long fidelity mirroring God’s covenantal relationship with us and all creation.

Peter and Sharon have both said they felt the meeting had ignored their main concern of winning the right to full marriage equality. Sharon said: "It just wasn't taken on board how strongly we feel that civil partnerships are discriminatory. They are not equal to marriage." She thought that the equalities office just wanted us to say we were happy with religious civil partnerships and then to silence us so they could go to the faith groups and tell them they didn't have to worry about gay marriage. Peter said: "The meeting mostly focused on civil partnerships in church. I got the impression that the coalition government doesn't feel confident enough to push ahead with same-sex civil marriage."

Peter, arguing for full equality, said that marriage is the gold standard and civil partnerships are second best. They are not equality. A separate law is not an equal law. Civil partnerships create a two-tier system of partnership recognition: one law for heterosexuals, civil marriage, and another law for same-sex couples, civil partnerships. In reverse, he argues that the homophobia of the ban on same-sex civil marriage is now compounded by the heterophobia of the ban on opposite-sex civil partnerships. Just as a gay couple cannot have a civil marriage, a straight couple cannot have a civil partnership.

Peter urged the coalition government to undertake a public consultation to determine whether the ban on gay marriage ought to be lifted. He said it should invite representations from individuals and organisations and, on the basis of the submissions received, decide if the ban should stay or go.

Changing Attitude needs to focus on the reaction of the Church of England to the proposal to extend the registration of civil partnerships to religious premises and to the desire for full marriage equality. We have to think carefully about educating the church and to building a coalition of groups, parishes and church leaders who will be committed to work with us to achieve our goal.

Colin Coward

Marriage equality for LGBT people

Tony Baldry MP, the Second Church Estates Commission spoke on Saturday morning in the General Synod debate about women in the episcopacy. It will be his task to steer the legislation through the House of Commons. He said the equality agenda now played strongly across all parties, and the difficult task of steering through the legislation would be impossible “if there is a scintilla of a suggestion that women bishops are in some way second-class bishops”.

On Saturday afternoon Robert Key, the former MP for Salisbury, spoke following the vote against the Archbishops’ amendment, when a number of speakers asked for the debate to be suspended until Monday or for a 10 minute break, to enable people to recover emotionally from the trauma of the loss. Robert effectively told Synod to grow up, behave like adults and get on with it (which Synod did, though some found behaving more like adults rather difficult).

Both Tony Baldry and Robert Key were criticised following their speeches. They were told in a very forthright manner that parliament wasn’t going to be allowed to dictate to the church as to what it should believe or who it should ordain. Church knew better than Parliament the will and mind of God.

What I found most disturbing was the passion and length of applause from Synod following the criticism. I was frightened by the arrogant, self-satisfied tone of righteousness and absolute rightness that was present. It felt as if the majority of Synod were applauding, though I didn’t think to look and check how many were actually clapping.

Tomorrow afternoon I’m attending the discussion about the next stage for civil partnerships at the Home Office at the invitation of Lynne Featherstone MP, the Minister for Equalities. Clearly, many members of General Synod would be critical of this initiative for a variety reasons, not least of which would be that they think God speaks and acts through General Synod and not through government initiatives, especially in relationship to gay marriage.

Last week, I said that I expect to meet people with far more understanding of the place of LGBT people in the Kingdom of God than many of those Christians who hold such strong views about homosexuality. I think that tomorrow, God is much more likely to be breaking into our lives and breaking out of the traps the church sets for God. It’s the dynamic which James Alison describes in Broken Hearts and New Creations and Raising Abel (both books which I wholeheartedly recommend!).

The government is grasping what the church cannot and what LGBT people often are afraid to grasp – the nettle of absolutely equality in marriage. Marriage is not a heterosexual institution and lesbian and gay people are not in a different category from straight people, nor are we unworthy of marriage.

The government is helping many of us, lesbian, gay, heterosexual, bisexual, transgender, evangelical, catholic, Christian, agnostic, atheist, see something about the nature of marriage which we have found difficult to recognise.

James Alison asks whether:

“Our sexual desire is something in need of a process of humanisation so that it can be part of a relationship of bodily presence to another, tending to build the partner up, enrich and delight them as well as care for them, tend to them and be stretched into age and death alongside them ... a process of bodily involvement with another that we have found ourselves being sucked into being given a self we did not know, but rejoice to see as something we are becoming, something holy.”

God is present in potential everywhere, contrary to the idea about God held by a significant number of General Synod members. God works unseen and unacknowledged in the lives of every human being, and can mysteriously draw us together through love into relationships and encounters which can themselves become processes of transformation, growth and change.

Thanks to those of you who responded to last week’s blog and made the point so forcibly to me. I will be arguing for full equality at tomorrow’s meeting. I have no doubt that full equality is what God knows is right and proper for all people, and that includes lesbian and gay Christians.

Colin Coward

Issues in Human Sexuality – where do you think the C of E should go next?

Changing Attitude has known for some months that two groups of bishops have been meeting to discuss how the House of Bishops might take forward Issues in Human Sexuality. There are four bishops in each group and one is broadly conservative/traditional and the other more liberal/progressive. The groups were initiated by the Archbishop of Canterbury who invited the 8 bishops. The Bishop of Lincoln convenes the liberal group and the Bishop of Birmingham the more conservative group.

The two groups are being brought together in October for a meeting with Archbishop Rowan. The liberal group has already agreed a statement setting out their position.

Changing Attitude has been asked by the Bishop of Lincoln to speak for ourselves and add our own ideas about how we would like to see the issue addressed. As John Saxbee says, we all know we are in a very different place from where we were when Issues in Human Sexuality was issued.

The trustees of Changing Attitude meet tomorrow, Saturday 24th, in London and the invitation to respond will be on the agenda. I would like to invite all those reading this to respond to me with your thoughts and ideas – some headings for discussion is how Bishop John puts it.

Heading this blog ‘...where do you think the C of E should go next?’ invites an all too obvious response because many of us think that Issues was a deeply flawed document in the first place and should now be binned. It might have had value as a discussion document back then, it has no value for us as a policy document now.

So, what would you like Changing Attitude to set before the bishops who will meet in October? Please email your ideas to colin@changingattitude.org and I will collate and forward them to John Saxbee.

Colin Coward

Changing Attitude in conversation with government ministers about the next stage for civil partnerships

Changing Attitude, LGCM, Stonewall, LGB Consortium, Lesbian and Gay Foundation and Outrage have been invited by Lynne Featherstone MP, the Minister for Equalities, to a discussion at the Home Office on Tuesday 27th July. With Jeremy Timm, the chair of trustees, I will be representing CA.

This is part of the coalition government’s commitment to talk to those with a key interest in what the next stage should be for civil partnerships. This now includes, in the government’s careful phrasing, that “…some religious organisations can allow same-sex couples the opportunity to register their relationship in a religious setting if they wish to do so.”

The conversation next week results from the amendment made to the Equality Act 2010 which makes it possible to remove the express prohibition on civil partnerships taking place on religious premises.

Simon Hughes, the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, said on Monday in a video interview that the government will give gay couples the right to civil marriage. He predicted that the change would be made before the next general election.

He said: "It would be appropriate in Britain in 2010, 2011, for there to be the ability for civil marriage for straight people and gay people equally. That's different of course from faith ceremonies which are matters for the faith communities… they have to decide what recognition to give. The state ought to give equality. We’re halfway there. I think we ought to be able to get there in this parliament.”

The coalition government is coming under increasing pressure to provide full marriage equality. Changing Attitude supports the move to grant full equality to lesbian and gay couples and more significantly for those of us who are Christian and Anglican, to allow civil partnerships to be registered and celebrated in church buildings by priests acting as the registrar.

The government is moving much faster than the Church of England, which will find itself even more out of synch with the local communities which we are in theory called to serve in this country. The church’s attitude to LGBT people affects not only gay individuals directly but families, friends, colleagues and congregations.

This isn’t a question for us simply of equality or not being out-of-step with secular society. I believe that society is reaching a place of truth in God that recognises the full and equal humanity in creation of LGBT people. There are other, rich biblical truths, metaphors, narratives and theologies about relationship, sexuality, intimacy and marriage to be set against Leviticus 18.22 and Romans 1.18-32.

Next Tuesday I expect to meet people with far more understanding of the place of LGBT people in the Kingdom of God than many of those Christians who hold such strong views about me and my kind.

Colin Coward

LGBT Christians can only be relaxed and happy when they can be open about their sexuality

John Browne, former chief executive of BP, has written in today’s Guardian about his resignation in 2007. He had broken up with a boyfriend and made an untrue statement in an attempt to prevent his sexuality from becoming public. He says David Laws’ recent resignation from the Government suggests that public figures continue to feel they have no choice but to cover up their sexuality.

When he was “outed” John Browne was overwhelmed by the support and friendship of many people. It turned out to be a blessing. His life is much happier now, he feels much more relaxed about being open with people and wishes it could have been this way from the start, but the spectre of earlier intolerance cast a long shadow over his life.

The biggest problem with concealing your sexuality is walling yourself off from the people closest to you, he says. Being open about your sexuality is about being honest with the people who know you the best and love you the most. Keeping it secret denies friends and family the chance to know who you really are. I would add that in the church context, this is also true for congregations and their priests and bishops. Hiding a core part of your identity is unhealthy and conceals the truth from the other.

Coming out is much easier in the UK now but John Browne writes that the business world remains more intolerant of homosexuality than other walks of life. As we know all too well, the Anglican Communion is an institution more like the UK business world in this respect.

The Archbishop of Nigeria, Nicholas Okoh addressed a press conference in Abuja on Wednesday. He referred to the need to protect Christian interests by speaking out against the invading army of homosexuality, lesbianism and bisexual lifestyle. He said same sex marriage, paedophilia and all sexual pervasions should be roundly condemned by all who accept the authority of Scripture over human life. He repeated the lie that the church in the West has vowed to use money to spread the homosexual lifestyle in African societies and churches and the myth that the sin of homosexuality destroyed the communities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Millions of LGBT people in the Anglican Communion live within societies where attitudes are intolerant and aggressively hostile at best and at worst, advocate hatred, abuse and imprisonment.

Our campaign in the Communion has to work for the eradication of church teaching and attitudes about LGBT people that are dehumanizing and dangerous for the health of the whole church as well as for individual LGBT people, our families and congregations.

Archbishop Nicholas Okoh is representative of all Anglican Primates, bishops, theologians, leaders and teachers who continue to live with unexamined prejudice. It is a scandal that many UK and North American leaders fuel the prejudice of Africans and fuel their prejudice with financial support. Support comes mainly from conservative evangelical groups.

‘Evangelical’ is a word which covers a huge range of Christian belief and practice, from those who advocate extreme intolerance towards LGBT at one extreme to pro-gay attitudes at the opposite end of the spectrum. To the left of the pro-gay groups are people with genuinely held theological reasons for supporting Anglican policy as exemplified in Lambeth 1.10 and Issues in Human Sexuality.

I have no doubt that John Browne would say the church must remove all intolerant, prejudiced teaching about homosexuality and create an environment in which gay people have the freedom and confidence to live openly and honestly, true to the self God has created.

Some would immediately dispute that as Christian teaching because the Bible says otherwise. They are simply wrong.

Colin Coward

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General Synod and women bishops - is the Holy Spirit calling the church to adulthood?

My laptop expired yesterday before I was able to blog. Initially I felt depressed and began to panic - how could I get online, and what was I going to do here at Synod if I couldn't report on events as they unfolded? Then I told myself to calm down and that it wasn't the end of the world. Maybe it was God's way of telling me that I wasn't here to blog but simply to be present, alongside my friends on General Synod for whom the next 2 days were going to be stressful and momentous.

Thanks to my partner's laptop, I am at last able to come online and read reactions to yesterday's debate, having attended the Eucharist in the Minster this morning and a WATCH meeting at lunchtime. The effect on me of my laptop crashing is not to be compared in scale with the effect of yesterday's vote on those who either oppose outright the opening of the episcopate to women or can live with it only if a woman-bishop-free space is created for them on their terms.

I think there is a similarity in my emotional reaction, however, with those who were distressed by yesterday's vote. Thirty minutes after my laptop crashed, I was able to pause, engage my adult self, and say, okay, this is where I am, deal with this present reality. I calmed down and resumed life without laptop.

Yesterday afternoon, some Synod members began to have Anglican tantrums, wanting to terminate the debate until they felt better, walking out when this was refused, discussing how they might overturn the decision when the debate resumes on Monday and issuing threats, yet again, about schism, money and splits. Anglican Mainstream reports that senior Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical leaders met yesterday evening to request an urgent meeting with both Archbishops to discuss the matter before Synod resumes on Monday morning. How to overturn the decision was the substance of their meeting.

Anglican Mainstream also claims the amendment was lost on a "procedural device" (their phrase and inverted commas) of requiring a two-thirds vote in all three houses, the clergy voting 50-50 and thus defeating the amendment. Firstly, it wasn't split 50-50, the clergy vote was 85 for, 90 against with 5 abstentions. The vote could have been taken by Synod in its entirety, in which case the amendment would have passed, but it had voted for a vote by Houses. An earlier crucial vote two years ago on women in the episcopate legislation was taken by synod, not by houses, and on that occasion ensured that progress was made. The Holy Spirit seems to be telling Synod in subtle ways to get on with it.

The Archbishops are understandably distressed that their amendment was lost. It was their baby. But they were trying in some way to reinstate provisions for those opposed which have been most thoroughly explored over the past two years and rejected.

My take on yesterday's vote is this. The Holy Spirit is guiding the Church of England into adulthood, to maturity as the Body of Christ. Yesterday she said, once again, Grow Up! It is time to welcome women into the episcopate. I call you friends, adult friends.

All sides in the debate now have painful emotions to work through. Those in favour of women in the episcopate feel somewhat guilty at the pain they have induced in others. But that doesn't mean you need to capitulate to emotional immaturity or blackmail on either side. Be generous, grow up, hold your nerve and vote for what in your heart you believe to be right.

I, of course, have a personal interest in this. I am in favour of the inclusion of women at every level of church ministry. One day General Synod will be asked to vote on the place of LGBT people in the Church of England in respect of Civil Partnerships and the ordination of those with partners. It will need a very mature, emotionally confident group of people on Synod to achieve a positive, pro-gay vote.

Yesterday's vote has laid another foundation stone. I believe members of Synod, Archbishops, bishops, priests and laity, will digest what has happened. Some will continue to feel hurt and in their inner world, feel marginalized or rejected. Others will reflect and adjust to the apparently new environment in which they find themselves. If we are not able to grow and change we will remain a church addicted to immature emotional attachments, to the idealised past and to the tyranny of the child which lurks in each of us.

Colin Coward

Southwark failure damages Church of England

LGBT Anglican Coalition Press Release 8 May 2010

Both recent meetings of the Crown Nominations Commission to choose a new
bishop for the Diocese of Southwark have been the subject of serious leaks
to a newspaper. This has resulted in huge personal pain and distress for
one candidate, Dr Jeffrey John, Dean of St Albans, for the second time in
seven years. It is particularly outrageous that some senior church
officials have suggested the leaks were engineered by supporters of Dr
John, rather than by those opposed to his nomination.

It has brought the Church of England into even further disrepute with the
general public, who will regard it rightly or wrongly, as another
example of the blatant homophobia that exists in the Church.

Once again the Church has failed to act with courage. The whole Commission
must be held responsible for this, regardless of whether the source of the
leak was an elected member, an ex-officio member, or one of the staff in
attendance at what is supposed to be a totally confidential meeting.

It is essential that a thorough independent enquiry be held immediately to
determine who was responsible. There should also be an urgent review of
the process of appointing bishops, as the present arrangements are not fit
for purpose, and an open and transparent procedure is clearly necessary.


Notes for Editors

1. The Anglican Coalition is here to provide UK-based Christian LGBT
organisations with opportunities to create resources for the Anglican
community and to develop a shared voice for the full acceptance of LGBT
people in the Anglican Communion.

2. The Coalition members are:

Accepting Evangelicals www.acceptingevangelicals.org
Changing Attitude www.changingattitude.org.uk
The Clergy Consultation www.clergyconsultation.org
Courage www.courage.org.uk
The Evangelical Fellowship for Lesbian and Gay Christians www.eflgc.org.uk
Inclusive Church www.inclusivechurch2.net
The Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement lgcm.org.uk
The Sibyls www.sibyls.co.uk

3. For more information contact:
Revd Canon Giles Goddard 07762 373 674 or Simon Sarmiento 07906 445695
or the LGBT Anglican Coalition Website www.lgbtac.org.uk