Oh Dear
Oh dear. The Living in Love and Faith Next Steps March update has landed. The meeting was on March 25th, the update posted on the CofE website on April 20th (the day after the BBC Panorama programme on the Church and Racism). I critiqued the January update for not mentioning LGBTQ+ people; for stressing the LLF Advocates (when the role description is heavily biased toward these people being non-LGBTQ+), and for failing to understand that there are no safe spaces for LGBTQ+ people in LLF discussions. In February it seemed as though some of this had been heard, albeit a bit dully. There was reference to LGBTI+ people. There was some attempt to talk about brave space rather than safe space. And if all of it felt clumsy, because the bishops making up the Next Steps Group simply don't know what they don't know, I pleaded with them to include us in. In March there's very little sign of any inclusion going on. Rather, the opposite. We are not mentioned again. We are de-person