Casualty of Gay Marriage: The Current Bedding of Church and State
United States
Sometimes one thinks of why the church ( Catholic and others) is spending so much treasure and sweat in opposing something that is destined to happen. You can stop gay marriage in the world but mainly in the US just like you can stop the sound of a bell that has been rung.
The main opposition to this is been the cozy relationship that the church has had with the governments but mainly the US government. As gay marriage comes to be that relationship is exposed and just like the HIV virus when exposed to light and air, it dies. They have bet the farm and the animals on the farm on this one and they are loosing this bet. The uS government as led by the president and many in congress and the courts see the injustice of what’s been done to the millions of gay people, the emperor and in this case the church stands naked with no clothes. The church that preaches justice and so on and so on. The government wont be able to stay in bed with this whore. The relationship will end and the government will have to go back to it’s constitution of ’separation of church and state’
As crazies in some churches cry for killing, the more speed this separation with this whore comes to be. Whore? I wont give you the definition because you can easily get it. But assuming you know what a whore is, you know that a whore beds many men, regardless of whom they are. If you know how in this century the church has slept with despot governments. From the Nazis, to other so called religious countries that stone and hang innocent gay men and rape lesbians. Yes, Islam is part of this very much so. But on the West, which is where the justice always begins. It begins in the west because these are countries that have been part of many human crimes and injustices but they have seen the light and have tried to be just. Not always accomplishing it, but hey have always had it as a goal.
Adam Gonzalez for adamfoxie*
I give you now a quote from Dr. James B. Nelson. This article written in 1977 illuminates that by 2012-13 the church has missed the opportunity to be the game changer. Instead they have been the opposition to justice.
1. Homosexual Christians are sisters and brothers of all other Christians, earnestly seeking the church's full acceptance without prejudgment on the basis of a sexual orientation regarding which they had no basic choice.
2. While antihomosexual bias has existed in Western culture generally, the church must take responsibility for its share in shaping, supporting, and transmitting negative attitudes toward homosexuality.
3. The Christian mandate for social justice will not let us forget that discrimination continues today against millions of gay persons in employment, housing, public accommodations, education, and in the enjoyment of fundamental civil liberties.
4. The church is called to do its ongoing theological and ethical work as responsibly as possible. Fresh insights from feminist theologians, gay Christians, and those secular scholars who frequently manifest God's "common grace" in the world remind us of the numerous ways in which our particular sexual conditions color our perceptions of God's nature and presence among us. If the Protestant Principle turns us against absolutizing historically relative theological judgments, so also our openness to continuing revelation should convince us, with some of our ancestors-in-faith, that "the Lord has yet more light and truth to break forth."
5. The heterosexually oriented majority in the church has much to gain from a deeper grappling with this issue: an enriched capacity to love other human beings more fully and with less fear.
Below I give us a post in this subject that appeared in the Telegraph Uk by Cole Moreton he concentrates how this is happening in England.
England
Two people meet and fall in love. They want it to be for life, so they get married. Simple, isn’t it? Theresa May, the Home Secretary, thinks so: “Put simply, it’s not right that a couple who love each other and want to formalise a commitment to each other should be denied the right to marry.”
That’s why May wants to allow couples of the same sex to marry on exactly the same terms as a man and woman. The Government has asked for opinions on how this should be done, but not whether it should be done at all – which has upset those opposed to the move. The consultation that closed a few days ago has received more than 100,000 submissions, the biggest response ever to an exercise of this kind.
The Roman Catholic Church says the Government has no right to make such a fundamental, irreversible change, and it does not believe the Home Secretary’s promise of legal protection to ensure no priest is forced by European law to carry out a gay wedding: “As no Parliament can bind its successors, the Catholic Church and other religious bodies would be at risk indefinitely.” The Muslim Council of Great Britain has called the proposal “unhelpful and unnecessary”.
The Church of England’s official response comes close to fury: “Such a move would alter the intrinsic nature of marriage as the union of a man and a woman, as enshrined in human institutions throughout history.” Launching the response paper last week, senior figures predicted a clash between the laws of the Church and the laws of the state that is unprecedented since the Reformation nearly 500 years ago. This would be “snipping the threads” between Church and state, they said; a step towards disestablishment, the end of the Church of England’s special place in our society.
It is true that as things stand, the definition of marriage – like so much of English law – is grounded in the beliefs of the Church as expressed in the Book of Common Prayer. “The only kind of marriage which English law recognises is one which is essentially the voluntary union for life of one man with one woman, to the exclusion of all others,” says the Church paper, which attacks the Government for talking of a “ban” on marriage between people of the same sex. “There can be no ‘ban’ on something which has never, by definition, been possible.”
Anglican leaders also have “serious doubts” about the strength of the proposed exemption for churches and faith groups, since it is now possible to have a civil partnership ceremony in a place of worship.
The first people to do so were Kieran Bohan, 41, and Warren Hartley, 36, who spoke their vows at a Unitarian church in Liverpool last month. The civil ceremony was held within a service of blessing. Mr Hartley said: “Bringing the two elements together means we are able to integrate our sexuality and spirituality to celebrate our love for each other, and our love of God.”
The proposal will still not allow couples like them to get fully married in church, although there is every chance of a legal challenge to this. More fundamentally, the Church of England says: “The established institution of marriage would in effect have been abolished and replaced by a new statutory concept which the Church – and many outside the Church – would struggle to recognise as amounting to marriage at all.”
The response paper says redefining marriage for “essentially ideological reasons” just to “meet the emotional need of some members of one part of the community” is “a doubtful use of the law”.
On the face of it, then, the ground is set for a battle between the Church and the state. But it’s not as simple as that. Despite the impression given by the official paper, the Church is divided. Many priests and lay people are sympathetic to the idea of equality.
Giles Fraser, the former canon chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral, who is now a parish priest in south London, said: “This statement has not gone before General Synod for any sort of discussion… it has been put together by a small team in Church House, Westminster, who purport to speak in the name of many thousands of people who will think the whole thing is complete tosh.” And he went on: “This is not a great day to be a member of the Church of England. I am simply ashamed.”
The Policing Minister, Nick Herbert, who is in a civil partnership, said yesterday that church leaders sounded judgmental and intolerant.
“I consider myself to be a Christian, and I’ve never in my life felt more distant from the Church than I do at the moment.”
Desmond Swayne MP, who is close to the Prime Minister, said that, as a Christian: “I believe that the promises of the Gospel are unconfined, they’re for everyone, and the sacraments that follow from that should be for everyone.”
But there is no doubt that the Conservative Party is as divided as the Church on this subject. Michael Farmer, who has given nearly £4 million to the party in the last four years, signed a petition against the move, by a group called the Coalition For Marriage, which was delivered to Downing Street with more than half a million signatures. Owen Paterson, the Northern Ireland Secretary, has said he will oppose the change in a free vote, and the Defence Secretary Philip Hammond thinks the Government should concentrate on “things that really matter”.
Why is David Cameron persisting with this? There are several potential reasons: to keep the Liberal Democrats happy; to repay perceived debts; to help the Conservatives seem modern and caring; and simply because he believes in it. “Conservatives believe in the ties that bind us, that society is stronger when we make vows to each other and support each other,” he said last year. “So I don’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I’m a Conservative.”
What, though, will the change actually mean? Firstly, complete equality. Civil partnerships give almost the same legal rights as marriage, but not quite. Couples are treated the same when it comes to pensions, tax credits, employment benefits, parental rights and in terms of immigration and nationality, but their relationship may not necessarily be recognised in the same way abroad. Crucially, they cannot call themselves married, as the Government has pointed out: “This means that when making a declaration of marital status to an employer, public authority or organisation, an individual … will often be effectively declaring their sexual orientation at the same time.”
If the relationship goes wrong, they can’t sue for adultery, which is defined by law as one partner having sex outside the marriage with a person of the opposite sex – a definition which will have to be reworked through case law. A person who changes gender will be able to stay married.
All this applies only to England and Wales. There are no plans for a change in Northern Ireland. In Scotland the devolved government has had its own consultation, with 50,000 responses.
The Church of England is unique in seeing gay marriage as a threat to its existence. It was built to care for every soul in every parish, with priests who automatically become agents of the state. They have a legal duty to marry anyone in the parish who wants it and is eligible. Now, for the first time in 500 years, there could be a difference between the Church definition of marriage and the way it is defined in English law. The Church leadership believes this will undermine its unique position, rights and privileges as the established church – deeply ironic considering it was only created so that Henry VIII could defy the Pope and remarry.
Frankly, though, it is as if those who speak for the Church can’t see what is really going on. Or else they’re playing politics, desperate to hold on to their last remaining threads of influence. If the end is nigh, it’s not because of gay marriage. That may be a snip in one of the ties that bind, but they’ve been snapping for a long time now.
Our relationship with the Church in terms of marriage, for example, was fundamentally altered by another piece of Conservative legislation that seemed minor at the time. The Marriage Act of 1994 gave hotels, museums, stately homes and anywhere else with a licence the right to host a wedding. Many people asked themselves why they should sit through services they didn’t want to be in, when the local hotel manager was offering all they wanted, and a glass of chilled champagne, too. In 1981 there were 351,973 weddings in England and Wales, but by 2007 there were only 231,973. Religious weddings dropped from more than half to a third. It wasn’t hard to see where people were going: in 2007, hotels and other venues hosted 100,000 services. Baptisms have fallen out of fashion and the market for funerals has also opened up, so that only 40 per cent now involve the Church of England. Its claim to be the place where we go to be “hatched, matched and dispatched” is now slender, and this will weaken it further – perhaps terminally.
Society has changed dramatically over 30 years. We no longer want to belong to anything much; we’re disenchanted with authority of all kinds; we have a remarkably improvisational approach to family life; and are open to cultural influences from all over the world.
At the same time, as congregations have shrunk and church leaders have been careless with their money, the Church of England no longer has the cash, the clergy or the people to carry out its historic mission in the same way. There are still brilliant people working away selflessly in the parishes, but as an institution it is in crisis. Those remaining ties with the state seem an anachronism and are under extreme strain. The special place for bishops in the House of Lords now looks untenable, for example; and the next monarch will surely not take the same exclusively Anglican coronation vows without recognising that we now have many faiths instead of one.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has said that it would be “by no means the end of the world” for the Church of England to lose its special status. Whoever takes over from him next year may have to accept that disestablishment is happening by default.
There are some who see the chance for the Church to reinvent itself, free of the shackles of the past. Others seek new, imaginative ways to use (and justify) its remaining privilege and influence, perhaps as a broker for people of all faiths. Meanwhile, it can’t seem to shake off the obsession with sex and gender, as a row over women bishops looms.
The Government is very clear that it has other voices to listen to as well, as it attempts to reflect the dramatic recent changes in who we are as a people, where we come from and what we believe in. If the Church and state are to stay together, they will have to stop shouting at each other, learn to accept what the other is saying and make huge adjustments, fast. But isn’t that what marriage is all about?
(Telegraph.co.uk.com)
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