Some more reflections on the language of marriage

The Marriage Equality debate for me is one of social justice.
Everyone should be allowed to have a committed relationship which is protected by law and which might allow for the nurture of children.
I  ( and most other commentators) am not at all convinced (along with mainstream political and language/linguistic) theory that language is neutral.
Basically...you open your mouth, or your pen hits the the paper and you have already declared a whole lot of stuff that you you may or may not wish to have disclosed.
So The Marriage Equality (my preference) discussion is subject to all sorts of renaming..eg:

Gay Marriage
Same-sex marriage

These both suggest that there are different types of marriage.
Obviously 'different types' of marriage does not suggest equality!

As a Christian I am well aware that conservative, right wing groups do not represent me (see below).
They are very strident and specific about using exclusive terminology 
as long as we describe marriage with other descriptors eg same-sex or Gay   then we are capitulating to the idea that marriage is not a Universal right, or that there are different types of marriage. Which is nonsensical!

To me I reiterate:
Everyone should be allowed to have a committed relationship which is protected by law and which might allow for the nurture of children.

But let me also add a discourse about the dilemma for Christians...particularly those of us who are NOT of the narrow/fundamentalist/evangelical/Pentecostal, right-wing perspective




Let me not begin to treat on the so-called Australian Christian Lobby, (ACL) I have already made a number of posts here, and occasionally written a few letters to the paper (see below(1)) about this misnomer

They are indeed "Australian"...
but "Christian"  is not an accurately inclusive descriptor...most ACL members are one or more  of evangelical, fundamentalist and pentecostal.
This may be a controversial statement...they (ACL) are no doubt Christian, but are they Universal (ie representative of ALL Christians)?  I would suggest No!

Indeed I, and many others in mainstream Churches are not only unrepresented  by ACL but at odds with their narrow, legalistic, moralistic, puritanical version of Christianity.
Which seems to me at odds with the Jesus who welcomed prostitutes, sinners and tax collec
tors

In traditional parlance  the universal term for all Christians is Catholic (not Roman ...which is only part of the Universal)
The Catholic Church consists of ALL Christians (not just the Roman). The ACL is certainly not representative of that Universal Church

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(1)Extract from: Letter to the Adelaide Advertiser 12/9/16

I do not identify with conservative and fundamentalist Christianity.To caricature all Christians as being steadfastly opposed to this change is wrong. I suspect that proper investigation would surprise the community at large. The church of ordinary folk is much more tolerant than its caricature.So who then will receive the ‘equal funding’?.  I ,certainly, am not happy for extremist conservative Christians (the Australian Christian Movement & Family First, for example) to represent me, and do not believe that in any sense they represent 'the Churches'.  They are not  the representatives of Australian Christians.

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(1)Extract from: Letter to the Adelaide Advertiser 12/9/16

I do not identify with conservative and fundamentalist Christianity.

To caricature all Christians as being steadfastly opposed to this change is wrong. I suspect that proper investigation would surprise the community at large. The church of ordinary folk is much more tolerant than its caricature.

So who then will receive the ‘equal funding’?.  

I ,certainly, am not happy for extremist conservative Christians (the Australian Christian Movement & Family First, for example) to represent me, and do not believe that in any sense they represent 'the Churches'.  They are not  the representatives of Australian Christians.

Not much to think about

Posting from a Facebook group:

So let me get this straight...Larry King is getting his 8th divorce, Elizabeth Taylor is possibly getting married for a 9th time, Britney Spears had a 55 hour marriage, Jesse James and Tiger Woods, while married, were having sex with EVERYONE. Yet, the idea of same-sex marriage is going to destroy the institution of marriage? Really?!

Oxymoronic

Yesterday, in that Facebook sort of way, I was invited to join a facebook group Christians for Same Sex Civil Unions-SA another FB friend made the comment isn't that an oxymoron (contradiction in terms). My reply is "That I am nothing if not moronic, but no!"

I have blogged extensively about same-sex unions in the past (see a range of them here). My point basically is that we Christians are in the business of encouraging faithfulness and stability in relationships.

In a curiously disarming conversation with the youngest SC as we drove home last night from luxury ice cream, she informed me that she was going to vent her anger this weekend by demonstrating...and more than that it was a sort of birthday outing...perhaps trip is a better word... for her young gay-tending friend. They were going to State Parliament to demonstrate in favour of (you guessed) gay marriage.

I was a little taken aback. But we talked about all sorts of interesting things like the failure of society to deal honestly with the history of homosexuality. It is a particular sadness to me as an agent of the Church that we are as bad at this as the wider community, and in many ways worse.

But the youngest SC, well aware of the fact that she is a member of a church community which has a much more puritanical and, perhaps, punitive attitude towards homosexual people and their supporters..is brave in the face of this.

Perhaps there is hope for us yet!

Royal obsession

On this anniversary of the defeat of the Republic referendum we are all reflecting a bit about monarchy.

A couple of articles in the press this week reminded me of this bizarre obsession we all seem to have worldwide with the idea that leadership and the right to rule is some how an inherited characteristic.

Touring Australia is a "Crown Prince" of the former Indian State of Rajpipia (here). How can you be a "Crown Prince" of a former state. I mean there is nothing to rule.

However the good prince, an openly gay man, is touring Australia and Asia to campaign against laws which criminalise homosexuality. His argument being that this aggravates the AIDS problem, I mean you are unlikely to admit to being gay if you are going to be executed!!!

I suppose the 'royal' status is a hook to grab attention. And why is it any different from a joke I might tell at the beginning of a sermon?

Likewise the Institute of African Royalty is meeting this week( see Associated Press's report here). At least these people may have some claim to represent some regional and sectional interests, though it is yet to be demonstrated that birthright is necessarily the best determinant of who might or might not represent the interests of a group of people.

There is a good photo of some leaders in traditional dress here....look at the footwear!

Meanwhile the ever smug Mr Abbott reminds us on RN this a.m. that we have 'evolved' our conception of monarchy by not focussing on the Windsors any more but rather on who the GG is.

Well, isn't that precisely what the Republican Movement wanted?

Disappointing- but not surprising

One of my colleagues was castigated in a  (semi-) public manner by our Archbishop for allegedly saying prayers with a gay couple for their relationship. This apparently had some report in the press, though I have not been able to track it down.

The subsequent castigation came in the form of a letter to the clergy by Archbishop Driver in which he told us what had happened. The priest was told to not do this again.

In his defence said priest had told the Archbishop a number of important things: 

• that this was a private occasion, 
  
• that the service was not and did not purport to be a wedding
  
• that he had (in his discussion with the couple concerned) made it plain that this would not be conducting a wedding.
  

I feel personally saddened by this. I am on record elsewhere as saying that we should be doing what we can to encourage and strengthen commitment, meaning and love in relationships. I would have thought that a principle way we do this is by saying prayers and encouraging others to join in those prayers.

Would it not be appropriate, for example, for my friend P and I to give thanks to God for our friendship over 35 years and to pray for God's continuing blessing on us? (We are not in a gay relationship...but we are both male)

The milk of human kindness

I went to see Milk last night, it is an interesting film about homosexual political activist Harvey Milk. The local politics of it is mildly interesting; the world change that it reflects is much more significant. In fact, although it is talking about events in the 70s, it is difficult to imagine not only the deep prejudice but also the irrational fears of the so recent past.
However what really struck me, lest we think this a peripheral issue; Milk says at one stage something like:

I have had 4 relationships in my life and in three of those my partner took their own life. This is not a struggle about acceptance; this is a life and death issue.

By the end of the movie a fourth partner has committed suicide.
It is a point worth noting. This is not just a minor issue. Living with lack of acceptance, prejudice and open disdain is something that no human being should have to tolerate.

PS Sean Penn is excellent, and acts and looks disturbingly like Milk

Stepping out

Get Up notes that over 100 laws were passed by the Senate last night to remove discrimination against same-sex couples. It is worth thinking what these 'discriminations' might be. Some are horrendous, like people being denied equity with regard to superannuation because they happen to have lived with a same, rather than different, sex partner. So, when your partner dies if you are married or have been in a defacto relationship superannuation consideration involve workign out what your entitlement to that might be. It would seem inequitable that people who have supported each other, perhaps bought property together, shared common goals and so on should be denied equity without costly litigation.
More emotional has been an understanding who 'next of kin' might be. Numerous stories abound of same-sex partners being denied any say in funeral arrangements, often cut out completely by families who have been antipathetic to the deceased person's lifetstyle.
What ever we may personally feel about people's lifestyle choices, we have no right to discriminate against what are essentially personal and/or private decisions.
The Attorney, Robert McLelland, has reasserted that same-sex marriage is not on the books (here) . This is to be expected, if not a bit lamentable. In time it will come I suspect.
In the meantime any steps forward are to be welcomed.

Quacking like a duck

Some will be interested that two priests of the Church of England (in England) went through a blessing of their civil union at one of the great London churches (here) last weekend.
The event is, of course, worth reporting; though I am also interested in the reporting of the event.
The clever Rector who performed the service seemed well on top of the histrionics of various reporters who were trying to get him to say he was confronting the Archbishop of Canterbury, he was doing something naughty, or that this was actually a wedding.
He was very careful to say he was doing none of these things; a little too careful maybe.
Reporters didn't actually seem much interested in the morality of the event, but more in the scandal with which it might be associated. This caused the good Rector (not so good in some people's eyes) to declare..."Why has this all of a sudden become about me?"
Perhaps he thought it was the issue that was important. A bit naive really

Uniting the disaffected

What ever else people say about Gene Robinson, the Bishop of New Hampshire, in the USA he always impresses me as the person who has the character of a Bishop.

Now, he may just have a good publicity machine (something most episcopods seem to lust after) but virtually all the articles I have read about him show a man with a deep pastoral heart. Not one interested in chasing the limelight, but one rather happy to nurture  small communities of faith in difficult places. Which is what his diocese is like. (see for example this recent article from the Guardian newspaper in the UK here or here)

The fact that he is no doubt one of the most hated Anglican Bishops of all time should not go unnoticed. His deep hurt expressed in the above article goes largely unremarked, instead he is caricatured as a monster intent on destroying the Anglican Communion.

Bishop Robinson is of course gay!!

There are bishops left, right and centre all urging us to be quiet and 'moderated' about the issue of homosexual bishops. 

There are too few bishops urging us to stand fast against the prejudice and indeed hatred of homosexual people that exists in society and in the church.

The pragmatic political types invariably defeat the pastors.

While we still live in a world where it is dangerous for a person to openly declare that their sexual orientation is homosexual...and we do... then Christians, in my opinion, should be standing against that prejudice rather than adding to it.

It doesn't seem to me, for all the blustering, that the hyperbole and comment from most bishops is actually clarifying this issue. 

Their second guessing  "love the sinner but hate the sin" as if homosexuality was (in their opinion) equivalent to murder, is so often thinly veiled prejudice that someone needs to challenge it. If it goes unchallenged too many people will believe that that sort of equivalence is true.

I do not accept the case that homosexuality is sinful. (What sort of God afflicts 10 per cent of humanity with a tendency to sin which the others don't have?). 

Nor do I believe that homosexuals have any more license to be sexually immoral than anyone else. None of us has that right.

The Gene Robinsons of this world help us see, at least, that God's love transcends our own smallness of vision

This is a bit of a ramble...expressing I think something of the anger I feel about this.,

Anger that the Church which should be the champion of the downtrodden is so often (not heeding the Saviour's words) the very first to cast not onbe but many stones.

God bless Gene Robinson, I am thankful that at least one bishop has a pastor's heart.

God is not a homophobe

If the 20th century gave us the word 'homosexual'then God help the 21st century whioch appears to have given us the word 'homophobe'.
I am an Anglican who happily accepts the traditional doctrine of the catholic creeds. Now the word "catholic" is a precious one. Although we use it denominationally, let us use it literally...to mean universal... God is a catholic God, {not a Roman Catholic God but a universal God, anything less is a nonsense} when we state that he disapproves of some of his creation more than others we are, I suggest, diminishing God (often called blasphemy).
The catholic God does not hate homosexuals, or Muslims or atheists. He universally love us all, because he is catholic. (for an interesting little scuffle see here)

The limits of tolerance

Sydney's Anglican Archbishop said yesterday that the world should follow the lead of his diocese in rejecting homosexual people as clergy. (here)
Many will no doubt agree with him, but I find it difficult to do so. While Dr Jensen suggests that many have reached the limits of their tolerance, I would at least want to make the observation that there are numerous aspects of the Diocese of Sydney which suggest that the limits of tolerance are not very large any way.
They are certainly not tolerant of practising homosexuals.
They are not tolerant of women priests, who cannot and are not licensed in that Diocese.
They are even not tolerant of priests who want to wear a certain style of eccelsiastical haberdashery which is common throughout the world.
They do not seem to be tolerant of the cooperative work of the Christian denominations through the work of the Australian Council of Churches.
They do not seem to be particularly tolerant of other Dioceses' right to exercise the same sort of authority in their Diocese as Sydney exercises within its boundaries (in recent years for example "Sydney" style congregations have popped up in neighbouring Dioceses without the authorisation of the local bishop)
While Dr Jensen may think that Sydney's example is one to be emulated, I find that difficult to stomach.