Faintly Bemused

It has now been over a week since the Federal Parliament passed legislation to allow marriage equality. I have watched local papers for the tedious flow of letters that might have followed.
But curiously there have been none.
What! The skies have not fallen in.
In fact, it all seems to be a bit ho-hum.
Exactly what we all predicted.
We have spent over a  100 million pursuing a questionnaire no one wanted, which  exaggerated popular fears and which told us what we all already knew.

I am personally glad, as a priest-religious celebrant that we have taken this step.
I doubt,  that I as a priest of the Anglican Church, under the rules of our organisation will live to see a marriage between two men or two women, or  intersex men and/or women in one of our 'hallowed precincts'. While I am sad about that I do get it.
And, as I choose to remain an Anglican, I endure that sadness.
Sorry because I think we can do better, as our Scottish, New Zealand, American & Canadian sisters and brothers have done and will do.

Meanwhile I am 'bemused' and totally GLAD that Australia has so embraced Marriage Equality that it is a non-issue

#marriageequality THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS

A letter appeared through Sydney's (Roman) Catholic Diocese this week
(Offensive letter see here)
I take some exception to its purporting ( or seeking to purport) to speak on behalf of all religious people about marriage equality.

Please note it uses the pejorative terminology "same-sex marriage" ( see a previous blog) rather than the eirenic  term 'marriage equality'

This letter should at least begin " Dear Mr Abbot: As leaders IN (sic) some religious groups...." 

This is a partisan, incomplete and non-representative group of individual religious leaders! (It could not be otherwise!)
To tackle the presumption in my particular denomination for example:
The Anglican Archbishop of Sydney,  is NOT the "leader" of Australian Anglicans.  It is quite clear that though he may speak for a number, particularly Conservative Evangelicals, he does not ( and cannot presume to) speak for all / most Anglicans. 

He is NOT the Primate. And Evangelical Anglicanism does not typify the views of many, if not most Australian Anglicans in the 21st Century

I am interested to note that a number of mainstream Christian Churches  have obviously chosen to not identify with this . Equally well, moderate Jewish and Islamic traditions are not represented.  The Buddhist and Hindu traditions are not there. Where are the indigenous voices, and the Maori and South Pacific traditions
It will be the case (unfortunately) that we will continue to struggle with this in Churches, long after the rest of the world has got over it!

Misleading, subtle, or downright confusing language

There is absolutely NO DOUBT that the marriage equality discussion is duplicitous.
You might note that I, and others,  always strive to us the expression
MARRIAGE EQUALITY
rather than
Gay Marriage
or Same Sex Marriage.
There is quite a lot of philosophical differences that are contained in these terminologies
It might well be  added that those who oppose marriage equality, consistently and deliberately use the terminology Gay Marriage or slightly less controversially Same Sex Marriage .  Make no mistake, this is deliberate.
There is an insidious side to this, because what it is doing is appealing to homophobia.
No one, presumably objects to "equality" but people do object to Gay don't they?
Pay attention to who uses what terminology!

I was likewise aware that the so called  Islamic State...ISIS, was using the word "State" to give itself an authenticity that clearly it lacks.....but deeply desires.
It is not a State, by any reckoning of the International law. But it took the world a while to wake up that it should stop calling it "Islamic State"
The ever-heavy-handed PM of Australia insisted on referring to it as "A Death Cult". I am inclined to think that by so doing he gave it an authenticity that we could well have done without. He seems to have stopped doing it!
(Might I say I have "linked" A Abbott, above, in a way that also demonstrates how words are not neutral! Perhaps rather to make the point)
Most people don't get the import of Semiotics....the use of pictures, words and signs.  The average sociologist would suggest  it is a damn sight more important than we imagine. We believe what we read, see, and hear....sometimes in a most irrational way

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!

Same sex Marriage

We seem to have been totally underwhelmed by the discussion at the ALP national conference about whether or not to permit people to enter into marriage relationships with a person of the same sex.
This is not a straight forward discussion. There are all sorts of questions that have yet to be answered.
What is it really about? Is it about ensuring the not unimportant right for people to be allowed to enter into committed realtionship, and to not arbitrarily deny to some what we would advocate for others.
Or is it about who might, or might not be allowed to adopt children.
There are for the Churches, theological issues; but these are of little or no concern to the Parliament. The great religious traditions (by and large) have not seriously addressed the question of how they might honour faithful same-sex relationships. All of them more intent on demonising homosexual people.
A couple of things appear clear to me: and they are that in a world where people are fickle and exploitative it surely behoves us all to encourage commitment rather than promiscuity; and that in a compassionate world we should not arbitrarily prevent people in ordering their lives in the way that they see fit.
I may not agree with or approve of anyone's particular choices; but that doesn't give me the right to impose my world view on anyone else. Particularly when my world view doesn't seem to have genmeral acceptance any way, and I have not been able to implement it terribly well myself!