What is in Kelvin's Head?

A kiss is just a kiss

22/11/2014

Can it really be that many are happier to see a gay couple marry than give one another a kiss?

Someone asked me recently whether the time had come to stop campaigning on LGBT issues. After all, he said, the gays have got everything they want now. They can get married and everything.

Well, leaving aside that the fact that “the gays” can’t get married in Scotland for another month or so and that when they can do so they will not be able to be married according to the same protocols as “the straights”, marriage in church not being an option for most same-sex couples initially, the truth is, the marriage debate is not the end of gay rights but the start of them moving into the mainstream.

The incredible thing about the campaign to open marriage to same-sex couples is that it wasn’t just same-sex couples who pressed for it to happen. It was a grand coalition of diverse folk – interested people like parents who have gay children, brothers and sisters, workmates and friends as well as gay folk, including gay folk who have no personal interest in marriage for themselves. But it was more than this too – it was a coalition of people who didn’t need to claim a direct interest in the debate. It was a coalition of those who thought that in a modern society the gender of the two people involved is of secondary significance to their love, their hopes for permanence, their promises of fidelity and so on.

In short, it was a coalition of the decent.

Now, that kind of statement gets me into trouble. “How can you say that those who were opposed to this are not decent people? Are they not good people, upright people, moral people too? They just didn’t think this was right – how dare you say they are not decent people?”

Well, the thing is, it isn’t me who is saying that – it represents the huge shift in public opinion that has happened. I’ve helped to shape those changes and am happy to continue to try to do so. Seeing the opinion polls shift so dramatically over the last 10 years is one of the most satisfying things that I’ve ever been involved in.

What happened is that we changed common perceptions about the kind of values that decent people could be expected to hold.

That’s why this is so hard for those who have not shifted much themselves. It must feel to them as thought they are on shifting sand. Moral judgements which once were those which good people could be expected to hold, became those which decent people were not expected to hold.

For some this has been a wonderful seemless recognition that the rights and responsibilities of being human apply to gay and lesbian people just as much as to anyone else. For those outside the big tent it must feel as though something dear has been shattered and broken. I don’t underestimate that, but it isn’t going to get any easier because we’re not done yet.

I was very struck this week in reading an opinion poll in the USA which indicated that there was strong support for changing the law to allow same-sex couples to get married. However, when the same people were asked what they thought of a gay couple kissing or holding hands in public the support somehow seemed to melt away. And there were different perceptions relating to gender too. It wasn’t so bad seeing women holding hands but gay men kissing in public was something that the decent still were not ready to see.

Can it really be that it is OK for a couple to get married, with all the support of the expectations of the institution of marriage, but that those who support them still feel squeamish about seeing such a couple display their affection.

I’ve a feeling this is an issue here.

When I’m conducting the nuptials of couples here in St Mary’s, I always have a rehearsal and quite often we address the question of whether the couple is going to kiss during the ceremony and at what point. (I think they should do what they feel comfortable with).

I’m aware that when I ask straight couples that question they can usually answer it easily. When I ask same-sex couples that question there is a big intake of breath as they think about giving their beloved a kiss in public.

I very occasionally see a same-sex couple coming to church on a Sunday hand in hand. (I see opposite sex couples doing so often enough not to notice). It is worth remembering that there are perhaps only a few hundred yards of the streets of Scotland where they would consider themselves safe to do so and only at particular times. And that’s just holding hands, never mind a wee gay kiss.

It would appear that we’ve a way to go yet before we get to the point where same-sex couples and opposite sex-couples are treated alike and can expect their affections to be regarded in the same way.

The campaigning will change in months to come but it is far from over yet.

I want a world where a kiss is just a kiss. And so much more too.

[Picture Credit – Ron Frazier Creative Commons attribution license]

gay, LGBT, pda, public displays of affection, Same Sex Marriage

7 responses to “Whither the Kirk?”

Pausing Place

25/08/2010

I missed last night’s programme, but I thought your comments were interesting.

In a sense, perhaps it’s unsurprising if the SEC is inwardly more positive about itself than the CofS. My take is that in the recent past, at least, the SEC started from a lower common denominator, not being the “local” church in the same way as the Kirk, and so it doesn’t have to contend with others saying of it “look how the mighty have fallen” in quite the same way.

As to the health of the Kirk (and the SEC for that matter), I think we need to reflect on our self-perception and to consider carefully the points and places in which a dying church (congregation or denomination) should be allowed to die gracefully, and the ways in which we might see new life emerge from the rubble.

As a young(ish!), relatively new Christian I have seen examples of (both urban and rural) SEC and Kirk congregations where there are few signs of new growth, little to draw in younger (under 50 year olds, to pick a random-ish number) new folk, and much to sustain negative preconceptions of church as boring, irrelevant and so forth.

We as a faith community need to get much better at stepping up to the mark in our creativity and engagement with our society. The sad truth is that most young adults do not know and have not heard about Jesus Christ, and unless we engage with them in ways culturally relevant to them, and which do not presuppose previous knowledge (too often taken for granted) they never will.

It troubles me, but I do think it’s true to say that in the SEC and in the Kirk we have a church sustained by the traditions and cultural reference points taught to a previous generation. Culture has shifted radically, with the result that the same will not be able to be said in 20 years time.

Our challenge is clear. Whether the Kirk and the SEC can step up to the mark to address what it means to live out the Great Commission in the 21st century is less so.

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Cal

25/08/2010

I didn’t really understand who this programme was aimed at, or even what its aim was.

Yes, numbers have fallen, but perhaps the small number of people who remain are there because they actually want to be, not because it’s the done thing on a Sunday morning.

And personally, I rather like the idea of a church “sustained by traditions”. Clearly the church has to be relevant to modern society, but in abandoning the traditions of worship then you lose the centre of why the church exists in the first place.

There was something very Presbyterian about the programme with its “we’re doomed” mentality. I find the SEC generally more positive in outlook.

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John

25/08/2010

The only book the presenter seemed to have used in his research was ‘The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800-2000’ By Callum G Brown – indeed Callum Brown was one of the speakers. The thesis of this well argued sociological study is that “quite suddenly in 1963 something very profound ruptured the character of the nation and its people sending organised Christianity on a downward spiral to the margins of social significanceâ€. That something he identifies as new media, new gender roles and a moral revolution which has dramatically ended peopleâ€™s conception that they lived Christian lives.â€ It could be said to have happened as â€œsex beganâ€ between the end of the Chatterly ban and the Beatles first LP as the poet Philip Larkin so famously put it.”
To balance this statistical decline the programme flagged up some of the “church without walls ” iniatives in a lame sort of way. All in all a most unsatisfactory programme that only told half the story.

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Kenny

25/08/2010

Good crit Kelvin. My reflection at the end of the programme was, “Lord, we visited this stuff over 30 years ago, and have come out of it stronger and better Church in the SEC.” Hopefully, we stopped longing for ‘the good old days’ a long time ago!

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MartinRitchie

26/08/2010

I thinking “Pausing Place” makes a good point about needing to creatively engage with society. From my own experience of working with a CofS congregation, this creative engagement is a weak spot for many.

As a counterpoint to the programme, interesting to note in the latest “Life and Work” a very positive article about a growing CofS congregation in Stornoway – and I mean really growing! So not all doom and gloom, and I’m sure there are many more examples of bright spots, just as there are in the SEC!

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Graham Vahey

28/08/2010

If the C of S disappeared completely we would be at a loss. During the dark and bleak years of Thatcher’s reign she refused to visit Scotland for 5 years. When she did she expressed shock that we had Royal Regalia and ordered it to be removed immediately for safe-keeping to England. Her ‘Sermon on the Mound’ is now historical for its condescension to the Scots. She was none too pleased to be handed two reports on poverty in Scotland by the powerful Church and Nation Committee. Indeed, it was to this Committee that the population turned to for a moral lead during Thatcherism. When James VI (‘Jamie the Saxt’) became James I in England, the population turned to senior Scottish earls for a moral lead. Unfortunately, the Piskie Church does not give a moral lead in Scotland, apart from the work of the Scottish Constitutional Convention in the recent past. The RC Church does pronounce on moral issues. Could it not be conceivable that all the major Churches could unite in a Committee to pronounce for Scotland on moral issues as the Church & Nation Committee once did?

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Aldous N. Gaiters

01/09/2010

Speaking as a Nonjuror myself I am sure the SEC has a right to a moral voice in Scotland. Taking the US daughter church of the SEC as a model you could see where the fissures would appear. There is room for a modern liberal Christian voice, but even I an old Liberal myself, would have to fear that such a voice might appeal to only a select few.

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