The Possibility of Difference

There’s a view of history that things can only get better. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, this was the predominant view for many, but the horrors of the Great War blew serious holes in it as a theory. Still, it has often tried to reassert itself since then in different guises.   People just need educating. Technology will help us. Global allegiances will end wars and famine.  I’d love this to be true. As a member of a minority within society it would be a great comfort. Looking back 50 years the world certainly seems a far friendlier place to LGBT+ people than when I was born. But… People are people. And minorities are minorities. And the times we live in are, frankly, scary. In New York and in London this Christmas , Jewish communities found the end of their Hanukkah celebrations marred by violence. In Britain, this comes after an election where the Labour Party lost decisively. In part this was because they were seen to be be antisemitic, a bad ...

Those of you who have heard me speak about LGBT+ issues know that the fundamental question I ask people to consider time and time again is this: If God has made us all in his image, are we all created equally human? I raise the issue because it needs raising. And almost every time I raise it, I see two basic responses. People who spend their life in the social majority often fail to understand the question and think I am posing a rhetorical issue which can quickly be passed over. Their response comes at me in variations on a theme of: Of course everyone is equally human - I don’t understand why you are even asking this - please can we talk about things that have real value? By contrast, people who find that they live in a minority situation tend to thank me for asking the question and want to spend more time exploring it… Because it isn’t rhetorical. The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) - a document the Church doesn’t find very easy read...

I was at a meeting recently. One of those meetings where a gay person is invited to 'try to explain' how the church might change. We'd been talking for a while, when the guy who was in charge said something that I presumed was an innocent mistake - the kind of theological comment that unthinkingly reduces gay people to something less than full humanity. So I stepped in and did a bit of explaining as to why I got what he was saying, but perhaps it might be useful to understand how that actually affects LGBTQI+ people. When I stopped, the guy in charge looked over at someone else and said - 'Hmm. Perhaps we ought to try and find some queer theology on this.' I wondered what he thought I'd been offering. I wondered if he'd heard anything I'd said. I wondered if it would have helped if I'd run up a rainbow flag or played disco music while I spoke. It felt like banging my head against a brick wall, because clearly nothing was going to change as a re...

The Archbishop of Canterbury has had a bit of a torrid time recently on LGBTI+ issues. Publicity around the Lambeth Conference next year is going a bit awry; Justin Welby's very well-publicised debacle over rescinded invitations to same-sex spouses of gay bishops is the unwanted gift that keeps giving. This week the Archbishop was reported in The Times as saying: “I had to take what is a really difficult and painful decision to say, in order for the conference to be as representative as possible and get all the bishops there and not have the risk of some provinces not coming because they felt I was pushing the envelope too far, that I couldn’t ask all the spouses.” Goodness, we feel your pain. It must be extraordinarily hard to be a straight, white, male, married bishop in the Church today. The Twitter response has been creative. Here are three: I do feel a bit of sympathy for him. Being part of the Living in Love and Faith project (the House of Bishops co...

EQUAL is a new campaign, seeking to enable same-sex couples to marry within the Church of England. The law currently allows any heterosexual couple living in a parish to marry in their local church (regardless of creed, race, age or - often - previous marital status) whilst a faithful worshipping gay couple are prevented by the same law from celebrating their marriage in a C of E church. EQUAL seeks to redress this imbalance. It also seeks to enable clergy who want to marry someone of the same sex to do so. And, importantly, it aims to achieve all of this while protecting both the conscience of those who in good faith cannot conduct such marriages, and enabling all clergy who wish to provide this pastoral care. Usually, I am against signing online letters and things of this nature, but in this case I am glad to have made an exception! This isn't a negative body or a complaint machine: it is a campaign that seeks to bring equality for every person while respecting those who ...

The Old Testament reading in the lectionary for the Second Sunday before Lent was from Genesis 2, including these verses: The  Lord  God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep;  and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh.   Then the  Lord  God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, “This is now bone of my bones      and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called  ‘woman,’      for she was taken out of man. ” That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united  to his wife, and they become one flesh. Adam and his wife were both naked,  and they felt no shame.   Time was, these words seldom got bandied around in sexuality debates. Now they often join the cohort of texts that are regularly trotted out to show how heterosexuality is God's plan, and gay people are someho...

Apologies for the radio silence... I've been busy elsewhere! Today the Church Times has published a two-page spread with a terrifically written-up account of a conversation I had with Stanley Underhill. Click the link to read it. Stanley is in his 90s, and is a retired Angican priest and also gay. Last year he published his autobiography, Coming out of the Black Country . It's a very moving account of a life lived mostly in secret, with terrible loneliness and shocking medical 'treatments' along the way to 'cure' him of being gay. Now a resident at Charterhouse, he is a delight and it has been a real treat to meet him and to share our stories. We talked about my story too, and about my book and the hopes we both have to make a difference so that those LGBT+ Christian people who follow us may know more and more of God's love in their lives and in their Church experience. Thanks to Madeleine Davies at the Church Times for asking us to do these conv...