What is in Kelvin's Head?

A Christmas Message for the LGBT+ Communities

23/12/2015

This piece appeared first at Kaleidoscot, an online publication for Scotland’s LGBT communities.

The first Christmas after I was ordained nearly 20 years ago, I happened to come down sick before Christmas. My senior colleague had to take all the services instead of us sharing them and all I could do was drag myself to midnight mass and sit at the back of the church amongst the congregation. The lights were low, but as I looked around it seemed to me that something was different. Somehow, I realised, the congregation was a good deal more gay than normal. In the half-light I could make out several young gay couples scattered through the building whom I was not used to seeing.

“Ah yes,” someone told me after Christmas when I was feeling better, “they are children of the people who live here who’ve gone off to the cities to live an easier life. This is the only time we see them. Christmas Eve is always gay night here!”

It was the perfect metaphor for where we were in those days. Young people feeling that they needed to move away from home in order to live open lives with those whom they loved, returning rather uncertainly at Christmas to a town that had often been unkind to them. Meanwhile, I sat in their midst feeling like the ghost of Christmas past. Not just because I was feeling a bit under the weather either – for in those days I was closeted. No-one knew I was gay. Or at least, that’s what I persisted in believing. I thought I was the only priest in the village.

How things have changed now. These days as an openly gay priest, I lead a congregation with gay, lesbian, trans, asexual and bi members all muddled up with the straight folk. Young straight people bring their children to church because they want them to grow up in a religious environment where equality is the norm and gay rights can be easily spoken of and fought for. And a loud, jolly party sets off to march each year to celebrate Pride. Every week is gay week now.

There’s still a lot to do of course. Lots of church congregations still have not caught up with the good news that if you are open to everyone then it is far less likely that churches will decline and die. My own congregation has seen steady growth from all kinds of people since we started to advertise ourselves as open, inclusive and welcoming.

The church leaders who still have negative things to say about us are sounding more shrill every year that goes by. Anti-gay voices are simply not trusted by the mainstream now.

Even though change in the church seems slow, we’ve still got great victories to celebrate this year. It has just been announced that a majority of Church of Scotland presbyteries support the General Assembly call for ordained posts to be opened to married gay clergy as well as those in Civil Partnerships. Another decision awaits that church at their General Assembly in May – had the presbytery vote gone the other way there would have been no chance to move forward. In my own Scottish Episcopal Church this year saw a resounding vote to bring in a two year legislative process that could well mean we are doing same-sex marriages in church by summer 2017. And even in the Roman Catholic Church we’ve moved from a Pope a few years ago using his Christmas message to condemn gay marriage to one who more recently has shrugged off questions with his famous “who am I to judge?” quote.

I’m impatient for change and want justice to come faster. But that just keeps me fighting.

It is part of the Christmas story that inspires me. When Mary was pregnant with Jesus she sang a song of justice that is part of what moves me every time I hear it. “God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” We sing that song of justice every week in my congregation and I have it running through my mind whenever I go on a demo or a Pride march.

Intrinsic to the Christmas story is Mary who simply wants the world to change. With songs like her Magnificat that we have recorded in the Bible, you can imagine her singing feminist lullabies and protest ditties to the babe in the manger.

This year as I go to church at midnight mass, I’ll be praying with Mary for the world to become more just for all God’s children, gay, lesbian, straight, trans, bi wherever they are. In the year to come, let us commit ourselves to stand in solidarity with those who are persecuted wherever they are. And let us commit ourselves too to rejoice with those who rejoice in any kind of freedom won – couples now able to marry and individuals with rights they never dreamed of when they were young.

My world has changed since I went to midnight mass 20 years ago and it has changed for the better. I should have expected nothing less. God sent his son into this world at Christmas to be with those who suffer and to make merry with those with something to celebrate.

I’ve plenty to celebrate this Christmas and plenty still to work for.

May God bless you with both forms of plenty this Christmas and in the year to come too.

Midnight Mass starts in St Mary’s at 23.15 pm on Christmas Eve – with communion for everyone. www.thecathedral.org.uk

Christmas Message, LGBT, Scotland

19 responses to “Preferring me dead”

chris

27/11/2010

Well said, Rosemary. As for this business of everyone’s having to remain quiet and reasonable while unspeakable things are spoken … I’m sorry. I have this whined at me more times than I can count, so that my own calm goes out the window and I want to rage, rage, and the advocates of calm sit in their dispassionate heaven and think all will be well if people just shut up for another generation. It’s an affront to any society that this discrimination is still allowed to be seen as anything other than monstrous, and we need to raise a storm of protest that will make this obvious to even the most chilly political mind.

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Rosemary Hannah

27/11/2010

For the comfort of Kelvin, however, let me add this. The people who promote discrimination against queer folk very frequently neither want them dead not yet unborn. What they actually (though mistakenly) believe, is that gay people would be just the same if they were straight. That the person would be just the same, because who you desire is some kind of bolt-on accessory which you can pick from the shelf and have or not have, like adding an MP3 player to your car, or just having a tape deck. Now I know that is a terrible misunderstanding, but it is not actually quite as terrible as wishing that the essence of people was somehow different.

FWIW I do remember teaching a session on this to students, having asked them to imagine what people 100 years from now would think of our attitudes, and having one student tell me that in 50 years all gay people would be ‘cured’, and my suppressing my fury then and trying to explain why I did not want my friends and relatives ‘cured’ – and all the emotion catching up with me in my room at midnight, resulting in tears and all-but lying on the floor banging my heels and screaming. I suppose it was less actionable than banging a student’s head off the wall…..

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Scottish Roundup

28/11/2010

[…] debates at the recent meeting of the Church of England’s General Synod under the stark title, Preferring me dead. More jauntily, the damsel of the dancing scones writes about blogging’s transformative […]

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Elizabeth

02/12/2010

I wanted to post on this when I first read it (via Google Reader) but for some reason the internets wouldn’t let me on the site.

It’s hard to read this difficult words, but I think it’s very important that they’re said. I have only the smallest glimmerings of imagining how difficult it must be to be be a gay or lesbian priest now and fear that all too often I am prone to ignore the wider actions of the Anglican Communion because I’ve found it too painful and aggravating. But ignoring it is my privilege and no good in the long run.
And on this issue, as on others, I find it unhelpful to advocate a quite and slow approach. Movement is not always uni-directional and I agree with Kelvin that we seem to be moving backwards, at least, as far as the SEC College of Bishops and the Anglican Communion leadership is concerned. The softly, softly approach is not justice and is not by any stretch of the imagination the only means by which justice is reached. On this issue, as on others, the question is, if not now, when?

And I really, really dislike gay and lesbian Anglicans being sacrificed on the altar of loyalty to the ++Rowan. This is what happened in The Episcopal Church across the pond in 2006 and thank God General Convention saw fit to reverse the decision in 2009. Loyalty tests of such kind are horrendous!

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Rosemary Hannah

03/12/2010

And bluntly the only loyalty worth giving is loyalty to Truth and God.

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Revd Ross Kennedy

04/12/2010

I didn’t listen or read about anything voted on at the recent C of E Synod so can’t comment.

But frrankly I’m bored with all the obsession with sexuality – I just wish we could obey our Lord’s command to love one another.
But let me say this to lFr Kelvin, I for one certainly don’t want you dead. Life would be so dull without you – I would miss your blog and your excellent sermons ( which I must confess I sometimes plagiarise – bless me Father for I have sinned….) Don’t agree with much of what you say on sexual ethics but accept without question your devotion to our Lord and your ministry at St Mary’s.

Prejudice and intolerance certainly smother any real opportunity for real debate. However, I have experienced this as much from those on the theological left (including correspondents to this site) as well as those on the theological right.

The fact is that we are just as likely to find prejudice among liberals as well as conservatives in the church. I remember Bishop Richard Holloway discussing the ordination of women on the Television in the 1990s and making the insulting claim that most of the men opposed were probably homosexuals.

I’ve also heard many liberals express a definite wish for all those who dare to oppose the consecration of women to the Episcopacy to get out of the Church… or maybe even to drop dead.

The fact is that lots of people experience prejudice for a variety of reasons – a friend of mine who trained as a male nurse in the 1960s experienced a great deal of prejudice from his female superiors and as a result an absolute block to any promotion.

Others are discriminated against because they are too short or too tall or too fat , or not intelligent enough or didn’t attend the right university and even for daring to choose to be a ‘closet gay’!

There is a whole suffering world out there to which we are called upon to bring hope and help in the name of Jesus. So let’s stop focusing on our own personal problems and obsessions and get on with preaching the Good News.

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ryan

04/12/2010

>>>The fact is that we are just as likely to find prejudice among liberals as well as conservatives in the church. I remember Bishop Richard Holloway discussing the ordination of women on the Television in the 1990s and making the insulting claim that most of the men opposed were probably homosexuals.

If +Richard was talking about Forward in Lace types then he might have had a point ;-).

More seriously: can you cite any ‘liberal’ church that is suggesting denying the sacraments to conservatives? Or pining for an age when violence and discrimination against evangelicals was accepted as a good? These days, people have less tolerance for ‘I’m not racist,but…’ or ‘I don’t *hate* Jews, but….” or “the sexes are equal, but” rhetoric but anti-gay discrimination on religious grounds often goes unchallenged. So while it is of course important to challenge all forms of prejudice, there are no major ‘Christian’ Institute type lobbies endeavouring to defend and legitimise persecution of the fat, tall,or short.

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David McCarthy

06/12/2010

Oh, I know that in the secret halls of the likes of Facebook, there are many who feel free to exhibit prejudice against churches and individuals who don’t fit the bill. That reveals what is truly in the hearts of people. I’d hope that no-one would permit such diatribe and speak out against it, just as I have done to those on ‘the right’ who speak and behave badly.

As for you, dear Kelvin, there are many who disagree with you, but in our wee bit of the Church, I seriously doubt if there is anyone who would “prefer you dead”. You are a gifted minister – we’d miss you!

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