• The Marriage Business

  11/12/2012

  The time has come for Church of England clergy to show us what they are made of.

  The government has decided that the Church of England (and, bizarrely the Church in Wales) is to be banned from opting into the legislation permitting same-sex couples to get married.

  Those who are clergy who are supportive of the right of gay couples to marry really have only one option open to them. They should refuse to do any further legal marriages. No-one can force anyone to solemnise any marriage – a fact which has been much glossed over by the media. Some couples in some circumstances have the right to marry in particular places but not the right to be married by any one person.

  If it is good enough for gay couples to be told to go get a Civil Partnership and then get a blessing from the Church then the same must be true for straight couples – they should go and get a Civil Wedding and have that blessed rather than getting legally married in church.

  There are many clergy who think that the church should get out of the whole legal side of weddings in any case – this may be the start of that.

  Clergy of the Church of England – it is time for you to put a ban on banns. The time is coming for you to stop doing weddings. Once the new legislation is passed, if your denomination cannot or will not opt in then the time has come for you to stand up for what’s right. If you support equality, do something about it and show us what you are made of.

Previous Posts

• Day is done

  31/07/2004

  Well, day is done. All went off well with the Affirming Catholicism service. It was certainly the busiest event that they have had recently. My early fears that people would not turn up to something in the middle of the summer came to nothing. The church was packed and it was standing room o­nly during…

• Holiday Reading List

  31/07/2004

  Since you asked, here is some of what what I read whilst on holiday… Nuns and Soldiers by Iris Murdoch (mad but good) Chance Witness, Matthew Parris’s autobiography (funny but not revealing anything) The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith (good but not White Teeth good) Strangely I did not read anything by Nikos Kazantzakis despite…

• High Mass

  31/07/2004

  We have a special day today at St Saviour’s. Richard Holloway is coming to preach and the choir are singing a special mass setting at a service at lunchtime which is sponsored by Affirming Catholicism. I’m not actually a member of Affirming Catholicism though I am broadly in sympathy with what they are doing. I…

• Blogging at the Democrat Convention

  31/07/2004

  The story is this – the Democrats in the US have given a very select group of bloggers space at their convention to cover the event online on their blogs for the rest of the world. So far so dull. Or so I thought until I realised that one of the 15 or so bloggers…