Where will it all end? Now some senior bishops are calling for gay partnership ceremonies to be held on religious premises.
The Times carries a story about a letter from a number of bishops who sit as of right in the House of Lords, who are calling for the right of civil partners to have their ceremonies on religious premises, which they haven’t been able to do hitherto under the 2004 Civil Partnerships Act, which came into force in 2005.
Only one political party, the Greens, has so far made it official policy, although the Tories have been dropping hints.
OK, PT readers will wonder why anyone wants to have anything to do with religion in the first place, but, given that some do, and heterosexuals can have their ceremonies marked religiously, with religious language and religious premises, it should be the same for same-sex couples, too.
Such a statement by the bishops won’t rid the Anglican Church of its bitter homophobic side, of course, and splits will continue. However, if we’re really stuck with religion for the rest of our own lifetimes and possibly well into the lifetimes of our children, and if that religion continues to have the ear of government, at least let it be gay-friendly religion.
There are religious groups and organisations in the UK, such as the Christian think tank Ekklesia and the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, who are easy with people’s sexuality (well, the latter would be, of course), along with the Quakers, Unitarians and the Metropolitan Community Church.
It’s when religious organisations want to dictate what others do, based on their own reading and interpretation of questionable scriptures (the original dodgy dossiers), that I get a tad annoyed.
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