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 “Predictions for 2014”

Rosemary Hannah

01/01/2014

I am struggling with nine – I mean, Lord Carey, being unhelpful, oh no, beyond imagination …. 😉

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Kate

01/01/2014

In what way is 9. a ‘prediction’. Next it’ll be ‘mystic sage thurible predicts continued arising of the sun’. Also tricky to imagine that there’s much more dirty washing in O’Brien’s washing basket unless he also has a wife and three children. 6, interesting. 7, I am merely a passing English person who has to read Scottish government press releases for work, but on this basis I can’t for the life of me think why you wouldn’t want to separate yourselves from England – just about everything is better – whether it’s some interest and care for soil fertility and the land, an enlightened approach to the arts or a First Minister actually prepared to turn up at a Food Bank. If it wasn’t a bit chilly up there, Id be taking Gaelic lessons now.

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Kelvin

01/01/2014

9 – might just have had a touch of sarcasm about it.
4 – there *is* more dirty linen to be washed
6 – surprised other people haven’t seen how clever Pilling was
7 – I don’t think so. We neither speak Gaelic here nor want separation. It might be suggested that reading SNP press releases might not actually be the most balanced way to grasp what is happening in Scotland. #bettertogether

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1. Kate
  
  01/01/2014
  
  4 – crumbs, and probably ‘oh dear’
  6 – When the Faith and Order commission’s last gutless report on marriage came out, we still weren’t short of people (Giles Fraser among others) who thought there was all a secret coded message in their somewhere that was altogether more positive. Pilling seems to me like another not-very-brave dog’s breakfast where you can see pretty much anything you like, if you squint. That doesn’t mean to say that nothing positive will come of it, in the sense that whatever he’d written, the C of E is going to be overtaken by events – and the sheer statistics of the whole of their youth turning against them. And the Evangelicals are quietly fracturing down exactly the same generational fault line too. But I’m not seeing the artful contrivance in Pilling that you clearly are….
  7. Here, my tongue was a bit in my cheek too. But I do read UK government press releases too, and honestly, if I was immigrating, I’d totally head for Scotland.
  
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  1. Kelvin Holdsworth
    
    01/01/2014
    
    7 – I think that Scotland is the best part of the UK to be in.
    
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  2. Beth Routledge
    
    01/01/2014
    
    7. I too think that Scotland is the best part of the UK to be in, and I am pleased that various things are devolved. No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
    
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robert

01/01/2014

It seems (to me!) that Carey is now filling the same place that David Jenkins took when Carey was ABC and is sought out by journalists at Christmas/Easter wanting something to write about.

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1. Kelvin
  
  01/01/2014
  
  Well, if they just ring me, I’ll be happen to take the burden out of his hands…
  
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Zebadee

01/01/2014

[7] Yes Yes Yes– in my all too humble opinion Scotland is the best part of the UK live in. This opinion has not changed over many many years.

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Chris

02/01/2014

7. I want to throw the baby out, but having once sung in a Gaelic choir (phonetic renderings of words) have no desire – nay, no need, even in Argyll – to learn Gaelic. Just saying.

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Craig Nelson

11/01/2014

I agree Pilling is not meant for us but it is a mechanism that allows for the smallest change possible. If that change doesn’t happen, none will, if it does then eventually the change will perforce continue. It’s a kind of fulcrum around which change will/can happen.

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