What is in Kelvin's Head?

What institutional homophobia looks like

19/04/2017

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.

11 responses to “A Form of Benediction for Married Persons”

Rosemary Hannah

13/02/2014

If it is proof reading you have got ‘those who are to be married’ p 13 when the liturgy earlier told us they were married. Same p 15.

As to the situation – plainly it is nuts. I assume it is a softly softly approach designed so that in fifteen years time somebody can say ‘But we have been marrying people in all but name for fifteen years, and nobody has ever objected’ – the not wholly unreasonable belief being that people tend to just-come-round to things. Not wholly unreasonable as this appears to have happened in British society. It takes no account of the difficulties and miseries these fifteen years will cause. Largely because they will not be caused to those formulating the policies, I imagine. And because many of those involved are, in fact, of the generation which has most struggled with the (to me) blindingly obvious that gender is irrelevant to love. That marriage is aobut love, and not gender roles (and women are not subservient in society) (which is what those who actually do believe that marriage is only for the straight all seem to me to believe).

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1. Kelvin
  
  14/02/2014
  
  Thanks Rosemary. That’s exactly the kind of correction I need. I’ve amended the document.
  
  I think the worry about waiting for 15 years before finding that we’ve been doing this all along is that vast numbers of people are presuming the church to be poisonous simply because they hear a public message which is that church isn’t for you if you have decent views about gay people.
  
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Kelvin

14/02/2014

Anyone wanting to see the Scottish Episcopal Church’s actual marriage liturgy to see how completely and utterly different, oh its so different you wouldn’t believe it, you really won’t be able to comprehend how different, it is from what is posted above can find it here:
http://scotland.anglican.org/index.php/liturgy/liturgy/marriage_liturgy_2007/

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Marnie Barrell

15/02/2014

I’m puzzled by this expression in one of the prayers – never heard the word.
“Together we now handsel them.”

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1. Kelvin Holdsworth
  
  15/02/2014
  
  Check out the notes in the marriage liturgy. It is an old Scots word.
  
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Rosemary Hannah

15/02/2014

Oh yes, I quite agree it it a poisonous situation. But ‘all’ it causes is slow death. People believe that is inevitable (I do not, but they do) and they can face that. What they cannot face is a row. Others in their faces saying things which they have to reply to.

At least, I assume that is the reason for delay, for the policy of attrition. If anybody can thing of anything else, do tell me.

Handsel – gift or positive good wish given at the start of an enterprise, or at a significant stage upon it, to wish it well upon its way. Scots word.

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Rosemary Hannah

15/02/2014

I am afraid both working for managed decline and the idea that loving somebody of one’s own gender is in any inferior are both ideas which I have no sympathy with or understanding of. We all have out limitations.

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Rosemary Hannah

15/02/2014

‘in any way inferior’ sorry.

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Bro David

18/02/2014

The US or Canada would be a great Honey Moon destination and the happy couple could easily find a number of Anglican parishes in either nation where they could celebrate their wedding nuptials in style!

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1. Kelvin Holdsworth
  
  24/06/2014
  
  The possibility of doing things in style has never been in doubt.
  
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Alan McManus

26/06/2014

Bro David that’s a welcome suggestion. Also welcome is the offer of a good friend on many of us at St Marys who is a minister of the United Presbyterian Church of America (apologies if not exact title) who is now legally and ecclesiastically empowered to conduct marriages between any two persons and intends to do so here in Scotland. Methinks that all this silly shilly shallying about may come to an end when the powers that be realise that where there’s a calenderfull of nuptials there’s noodles of cash. And what church will say no to a sizeable contribution to the roof or organ fund?

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