• From Criminality to Equality

  06/02/2013

  I think this is one of the moments in the debates on marriage where there’s more wisdom to be heard in one speech made well than in acres of newsprint trying to analyse the vote in the House of Commons last night.

  Here’s David Lammy giving it his all.

  Let me speak frankly.

  “Separate but equal” is a fraud.

  “Separate but equal” is the language that tried to push Rosa Parks to the back of the bus.

  “Separate but equal” is the motif that determined that black and white could not possibly drink from the same water fountain, eat at the same table or use the same toilets.

  “Separate but equal” are the words that justified sending black children to different schools from their white peers – schools that would fail them and condemn them to a life of poverty.

  It is an excerpt from the phrasebook of the segregationists and the racists.

  It is the same statement, the same ideas and the same delusion that we borrowed in this country to say that women could vote – but not until they were 30.

  It is the same naivety that gave made my dad a citizen in 1956 but refused to condemn the landlords that proclaimed “no blacks, no Irish, no dogs”.

  It entrenched who we were, who our friends could be and what our lives could become.

  This was not “Separate but equal” but “Separate AND discriminated”,

  “Separate AND oppressed”.

  “Separate AND browbeaten”.

  “Separate AND subjugated”.

  Separate is NOT equal, so let us be rid of it.

  Because as long as there is one rule for us and another for them, we allow the barriers to acceptance to stand unchallenged.

  As long as our statute books suggest that the love between two men or two women is unworthy of being recognised through marriage, we allow the rot of homophobia to fester.

  And then again at the end:

  The Jesus I know was born a refugee, illegitimate, with a death warrant on his name in a barn among animals. He would stand up for minorities. That is why it is right for people of religious convictions to stand up for this bill.

  There’s a longer version of the speech (which he would have given if he had been given more time) on his website.

  David Lammy, equal marriage, LGBT, parliament

Previous Posts

• Banner of Truth

  03/01/2005

  In yesterday's sermon, I made mention of an article about the Tsunami that Rowan Williams wrote for o­ne of the newspapers. It was the Telegraph, which I've heard o­ne bemitred o­ne call the Banner of Truth. I contrasted the article (which concluded that these things have happened before but that faith survives them) with the headline…

• Epiphany Sermon – 2 January 2005

  02/01/2005

  Last week, I stood up in church to read the gospel, just before the Children presented us with their nativity play. For once, I felt that the Lectionary had let me down. The Young Church members were crowded into the front rows of the church dressed as shepherd, sheep or king or whatever ? ready…

• The Usual Resolutions

  01/01/2005

  1 – Become young and skinny 2 – Become Prime Minister 3 – Double the congregation

• What I've been reading

  29/12/2004

  Just finished The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst's Booker winner. He does have a capacity to capture with such wistful longing, situations which seem so unattractive in the cold light of day. The mark of a true stylist, I suppose.Well, that having been completed over the last couple of days, I guess that I had better turn…