Anglican drama round up

Posted by Sappho on June 1st, 2005 filed in Anglican Communion News, Blogwatch

For anyone who missed it, the latest weird news in the ongoing saga of contention in the Anglican Communion over homosexuality is this Sunday Times headline: Church to let gay clergy ‘marry’ but they must stay celibate.

Actually, “marry” is an overstatement, and deserves the scare quotes here. What has happened is that the UK passed a new “civil partnerships” law, sort of like the civil unions in Vermont, where same sex couples can register for a partnership which parallels a lot of the rules of marriage, but it’s called by a different name, and you get civil partnered by signing a form together, instead of by speaking vows together as for marriage. The C of E considered the matter, and decided that any of its clergy who want to sign up for said civil partnerships can do so, and the church will even give them benefits, but they have to promise their bishops that they’re not having sex. This provokes howls of outrage from bloggers on both sides of this dispute.

Christopher of Bending the Rule is furious:

This is perhaps the most irrational and least well thought-through piece of ecclesiastical baloney I’ve ever seen. Homosexual clergy who “marry” under the new civil laws are not in “full” marriages. Because homosexual unions are not “full” marriages, they may not have sex. So choose. Legal protection or sex. Pension fund or sex. Ultimately, in many cases, calling or calling? Priesthood or relationship? Which shall it be? And the bishop is going to check. Knock. Knock. “Housekeeping.” “But we’re being compassionate by allowing those people civil partnerships and at the same time upholding church doctrine,” see, the bishops point to their accomplishment with satisfaction and handwringing as they strain at gnats.

Terry Mattingly of Get Religion is no happier from the other side of the fence:

That sound you just heard on the other side of the Atlantic was the million or so people who still sit in pews in the postmodern Church of England picking up a copy of the Sunday Times and shouting, in unison, “Say WHAT!?!?!”

Andrew Sullivan observes:

ONLY IN ENGLAND: The Church of Englad will allow its priests to marry their partners under Britain’s looming civil partnership provisions, civil marriage in all but name. But they will have to promise they’re not having sex. Of course, if they’ve been married for many years, that might not be such a sacrifice.

titusonenine discusses the matter here and here, and Thinking Anglicans has additional information on the Civil Partnership Act and the C of E here.

A few people come forth amid the howls of outrage to defend the church’s decision. John Wilkins, in titusonenine’s comments, writes:

If find it a bit telling the way this is conveyed without any understanding of the historical research this work is based upon. The way homosexuality has generally been lived is among deep friendships where no sex occured. This is exacerbated by the plain fact that in Anglicanism, the church obeys the laws of the state. Williams doesn’t have much of a choice. You conservatives might start sending missionaries to change English law and culture. Good luck and God bless.

You might want to check out Bray’s book “the Friend.” It’s seminal work, actually, much more rigorous than John Boswell, for example. Men had physical friendships that were not genital, but satisfied desire enough.

I find the opposition to the plan remarkable, for it does seem to assuage conservative fears of gay sex. It seems like conservatives don’t even want them to have single main friendships. We just don’t trust them, do we?

(This provoked a lot of surprise, in the same comments thread, over the sentence, “The way homosexuality has generally been lived is among deep friendships where no sex occured. ” I think what John means here is that the kinds of church blessings of same-sex relationships that people like Boswell have found involved deep friendships in which no sex was supposed to be occurring, not that most gay people are less interested in sex than straight people.)

Joe Perez urges Terry Mattingly to Get a Clue:

According to the piece, the proposal drawn up by the Archbishop of Canterbury is not to allow clergy to marry. It is to allow clergy who choose to have their already existing domestic partnerships recognized by law not lose their licenses as clergy. There is no new decision regarding marriage and no changes to policy concerning sexuality.

…

The response by the ever-vigilent GetReligion anti-bias patrol: Whooops! Looks like they were so busy expressing shock that Anglicans might actually be giving gay clergy a thin sliver of greater dignity for their committed relationships that they didn’t even notice.

And RatherNotBlog wonders “What’s All the Fuss About?”

People, please stop hyperventilating. This Sturm und Drang appears to be a result of reading the headline and not the actual substance of the proposal.

A FAQ on the UK civil partnership law can be found here (via Marriage Debate).