What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • What institutional homophobia looks like

    Here’s a quick example to illustrate what institutional homophobia looks like.

    Yesterday the report of the Theological Forum of the Church of Scotland to the General Assembly was published and it deals with a number of issues of interest to LGBT people. (It is well worth a read).

    Amongst the “deliverances” ie proposals to go to the General Assembly from that Forum is this very clear call for an apology to LGBT people.

    The General Assembly:

    Invite the Church to take stock of its history of discrimination at different levels and in different ways against gay people and to apologise individually and corporately and seek to do better.

    What could be clearer? Should the General Assembly apologise for discrimination against gay people it would be a huge and significant moment and very much to be welcomed.

    However, listen to what the Principal Clerk to the General Assembly, the Very Rev John Chalmers of the Church of Scotland said on TV last night about the proposal:

    “What the General Assembly is being asked to do this year  is acknowledge and apologise for some of the harsh things that have been said on both sides of this debate over the last 20 to 30 years and I think the General Assembly will readily want to do that.”

    This is very clearly not what the General Assembly is being asked to do.

    This is a good example of institutional homophobia. In describing a call to apologise to gay people, gay people and their supporters are represented as being people making statements for 20 or 30 years which need to be apologised for.

    I don’t believe that John Chalmers is a homophobe. Just the opposite. I’m quite sure that he is charming to gay people and I suspect he wants the church to accept gay people. However, put in a public position to explain a proposal to apologise for discrimination he gets it very wrong.

    I have no doubt that there are huge institutional pressures on him over this issue and that is why he speaks as he does.

    However, this looks to me like a very clear example of what institutional homophobia looks like. Institutional homophobia seems to come most often from people who are personally supportive of those of us who are gay.

    Ironically, this is the kind of thing that needs to be apologised for.

    We have it in our church too.

    I find that people don’t like me pointing it out.

4 responses to “St Augustine”

  1. Richard Avatar
    Richard

    I like the painting very much, but, forgive me for my ignorance , what is this “explains much” of which you speak? Ohh, and the literal minded in me says – even as a baby – as the child of Monica of Hippo – he was still Augustine of Hippo.

    Reply
    1. Kelvin Avatar
      Kelvin

      Surely at this point he was Augustine of Tagaste if he was of anywhere.

      Reply
  2. Alan McManus Avatar
    Alan McManus

    So beehive hairdos are that old? The things you learn from art. If that Tardis that sells coffee outside the Botanic Gardens actually worked, I would go back and kidnap that straitjacketed infant, materialise at Woodstock and hand him over to the nearest couple of flowerchildren. Just imagine a Church with no Jansenists and their ilk! Okay we’d have to do without Pascal but just think what Glasgow would be like without You-Know-Who glowering over it. From Clyde Street.

    Reply
  3. Alan McManus Avatar
    Alan McManus

    I’ve just lost ‘What Theologian Are You?’ which I’d reached through a suggestion above, however I did the quiz and though I often thought ‘yes, but I wouldn’t put it that way’ and came up with a tie between Charles Finney (of whom I’m entirely ignorant) and AUGUSTINE! With Calvin a close third. I’m doomed. It’s predestined.

    Reply

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