50 Years of Protest and Change

As day turns to evening on the 28 June 2019, it is difficult not to think of a couple of relatively small-scale riots that took place 50 years ago and murmur a quiet prayer of thanksgiving for the rioters. I have little doubt that there was no way they could foresee the movement which was to spring from the events that took place in and around the Stonewall Inn in New York.

Earlier this week I spent a lovely evening in the sun sitting outside the Royal Gourock Yacht Club eating a meal with friends. The sun was shining, the water was calm, boats were bobbing about and we were served good food. It could not have been further away from the rather downbeat drinking establishment that the Stonewall Inn had become all those years ago. However, as I sat eating my haddock and chips, one of the friends I was with said to me: “Do you know what I saw this week? I saw two young men walking down the street hand in hand. In Gourock! Imagine! How did that happen?”

I looked at another friend who, like me, has been on a march or two in his time and said, “Well, it didn’t just happen. We made it happen”.

But such is the luxury of being able to look back. No-one ever punched me in the nose, and I’d better remember that whilst thinking about what was started 50 years ago tonight.

When the denizens of the Stonewall Inn were attacked by the police they seemed initially to simply have been fighting back rather than kick-starting a movement that would reach even down the Clyde on a balmy night in June 50 years later. They were not the A-Gays or the Power Lesbians of New York either. More the young, often homeless young people who had washed up in the big city for reasons with which gay people will instinctively be familiar. They were not welcome at home and they were not welcome most other places either. Lost LGBT youth still exist in major cities. The LGBT movement started by the Stonewall event hasn’t, sadly, stopped that completely.  But so very much has changed in those 50 years.

There is so much to be thankful for. For those who, when set upon by a violent police force did high kicks and mocked the authorities mercilessly. For those who organised in the middle of chaos. For those who came up with slogans. For those who tended the wounded. For those who encouraged. For those who didn’t give in.

Reading first hand accounts of the riots themselves, it is difficult for me not to hear echoes of the Magnificat, the riot itself a vesper prayer of those who knew that the world in which they were oppressed, needed to be toppled over. Reading of the corrupt world in which those who were attacked, I find myself cheering them on with a belated prayer that the mighty might be brought down from their seat with all the consequent glitter of the exaltation of the humble and meek.

I celebrate and rejoice in all the activists then and since who have made this world a place where I can live in much more security than anything imaginable by the original rioters. And I am impatient for more.

Thinking about the Stonewall Riots this particular week, it is impossible not to remember explicitly trans people and the current campaigns to change the law with regard to gender recognition. This process is going to take longer in Scotland than some had hoped for and there are many people directly affected who are feeling sad, cross and bereft right now. I’m someone who is sometimes puzzled by what trans rights to fight for – I’m very conscious that I don’t speak from that experience and the place of the church in those debates is very different from the discourse a few years ago over the marriage of same-sex couples. However I do see the most ghastly attacks (physical and in digital space) on trans people and recognise them as a kind of bullying and intimidation with which I am familiar.

The conversation about how to reform the Gender Recognition Act will go on and it was clear from a gathering I was at within the Scottish Parliament building earlier this week that the genderqueer people who took leading roles in fighting back against oppression 50 years ago are still inspiring people today.

The rights that have been won by the modern LGBT movement have been considerable. However, when those of us who have been active gather and talk at the moment, we often talk of the fragility we feel about those rights.

And so much of what we have is partial anyway.

I recently married a couple from Northern Ireland who were in a Civil Partnership. That meant that when they set off to come to get married they were in a Civil Partnership in Northern Ireland but at the moment I married them they became married in Scotland. Moreover, Scots Law says that at that moment, they became married from the date of their Civil Partnership. (As they travelled to come to Glasgow they were thus in one sense both married and not married simultaneously). And once they took the Easyjet flight home, as soon as they touched down they were in a part of the UK closer to here than Inverness, and all of a sudden they were no longer regarded as married in the jurisdiction in which they live.

And I became aware this week of someone in the city too frightened to come to a Pride march as they could lose their job as a teacher in a state-funded Roman Catholic school in this city if they were seen to have done so and been reported to their bishop. (It happens to be the case that none of my friends in the Roman Catholic Church would think for a moment that such behaviour helps spread the good news of Jesus Christ – they seem as scandalised by it as I am). We won’t have inclusive education until such discrimination has been stopped in our local schools and it is a disgrace to the inclusive credentials of our local and Scottish governments that it hasn’t been tackled already.

Such absurdities would never be tolerated by straight people. Nor should they be by us.

The fight is far from over and there are plenty of us who are eager not only to secure the rights we have won but to fight for more.

And notwithstanding the current fad for national populism, the borders of our countries will not ultimately inhibit or hold back the simple demand for equality that comes from those who don’t have it yet.

The fight isn’t won yet.

It won’t be over until the children of Kampala and Corstorphine grow up in institutions and households where prejudice against LGBT folk is unthinkable, never mind unrepeatable.

It won’t be over until lesbians can take any bus in the world without being subject to the taunts and blows of putative patriarchs.

It won’t be over until absurd aspersions cast against trans people are laughed at.

It won’t be over until LGBT people are no longer running from home, from school or from life itself.

It won’t be over until the boys holding hands in Gourock are unremarkable.

But one day… one day it will be over.

And until then, we march and work and dance and fight and laugh and pray.

And I have no doubt, the whole company of heaven joins us.

9 Pointers towards how LGBT Inclusion will be won in the Church of England

I believe with all my heart that one day all the churches of the Anglican Communion (and let’s not stop there – all of God’s churches anywhere) will be fully inclusive of LGBT people. I’m working for that and have been for quite some time. And I believe it will happen because I believe in the loving, transforming power of God.

I find though that the loving, transforming power of God most often seems to work through the loving transforming actions of God’s beloved here on earth. The things we do can make God’s kingdom come all more quickly, which when you think about it, should not really surprise us.

It seems to me that the current strategy for working towards LGBT inclusion that seems to be being adopted south of the border is for the most prominent campaigners to fight one another publicly and then wait hoping and praying that a bunch of straight bishops (who have some form when it comes to prolonging conflict themselves) will somehow wave a magic mitre and usher in endless days of gay love and delight.

The reality of course is that, though it is going to come about, it isn’t going to come about that way.

Now, it seems to me that if those who desire LGBT inclusion in the Church of England were to be listening to the Holy Spirit of common sense then they might find the following 9 points of focus might provide them with some short-cuts to where they want to go. Things down south are very different to how things work in my own dear church but sometimes being outside a province and looking in can give one a useful sense of perspective. This is how I see things just over the border from here.

  1. This can only be won in the Church of England in the General Synod of the Church of England. Notwithstanding anything else I say below, it can be won no-where else. That means building up a formidable synodical operation that works vote by vote for inclusive policies. The key here is that getting permission to marry gay couples in church unlocks all the other things you want too. Yes, it is worth making every debate about pensions, the forces chaplaincies, schools etc all debates where LGBT issues are paramount – these are all things where LGBT rights need to be talked about. However, equal marriage is the goal.  And deliciously in a synodical system it is possible (difficult admittedly, but possible) to get things on the agenda. Oh, and don’t forget that the best way to provide jollity to a diocesan synod is to get enough people elected onto it and propose a motion or two about the national policy of the C of E when it comes to LGBT people. Don’t forget that  it was in Diocesan Synods that the dreaded covenant was defeated in England. Synods are your friends.
  2. Although things can only finally be sorted out in the General Synod, it is important to remember that there are other places in which pressure can come. One of the most important of these is the one debating chamber where the bishops of the Church of England are present but don’t possess either a majority or a veto – yes, the House of Lords. We know already that Archbishop Justin doesn’t like it when members of the House of Peers tell him he is being a rotter to the poofs. I’ve never heard of anyone campaigning around these issues in England who is cultivating members of the House of Lords but if they did it would pay dividends. The Church of England is essentially part of the establishment and it is the establishment which will need to be involved in sorting out all the anti-gay policies of the C of E, just as it has done with other institutions.
  3. Pressure can also be brought in the House of Commons, of course. However, here it needs to be targeted towards government policies. We need MPs, good, solid, shire-based Anglican MPs standing up and asking Theresa May whether she really intends to give more money to an anti-gay institution such as the Church of England to run even more schools. Oh, I know it is ugly to be accused of using schoolchildren as bargaining chips but it is even more ugly to be a bullied gay kid and putting pressure on the peculiar English school system over this issue pays dividends both to that kid who needs our support and the wider cause too.
  4. Every single political party needs to be asked repeatedly whether it will remove the Quadruple Lock on the C of E. Every single one without exception. So who is going to do that and when and how will that be decided? (Oh, I know, that’s a tricky question I slipped in there. I know, I know).
  5. Now, the joyful thing about the Church of England is that it claims to be a church for the whole English nation (whatever that is). This means that the whole English nation (whatever that is) can be enjoined to have a say. It would be good to hear a bit more of the old campaigning noises coming from Stonewall to put pressure on government, particularly about the schools issues and the quadruple lock. Postcard campaigns to MPs, being noisy in the media, using the undoubted skills of Ruth Hunt in the public arena – all these things will help. The important thing is that the way in which change will happen is when LGBT campaigners work to make Stonewall and other equality institutions work harder to call the establishment to account in the faith zone and not the other way round. Trust me on this one Stonewall – this isn’t about you trying to get LGBT faith campaigners to do the work here. Change is going to happen precisely the other way around and it is worth doing because the streets of England will not be friendly streets for LGBT people until the homophobia of the churches has been beaten. It needs to be a public, mass campaign using all the tricks of the previous Equal Marriage debates. Don’t be squeamish about telling religious people what to do – even the bible recognises that sometimes those outside the community of faith speak holy words of wisdom most clearly.
  6. One of the things that I think would be most effective most quickly would be for those who campaign on these issues in England to realise that their enemy is not those with whom they disagree. Their enemies consist entirely of those who agree with them but who stay silent. There’s really no need to fight people who disagree with you. It is mostly pointless and promotes the heresy that there are two equal sides to this conflict, which we all know there are not. However, there’s every reason to fight tooth and nail to get all those who might believe in the depths of their hearts in the haughty homophobes of the hierarchy being brought low and the lowly lesbian ordinands being raised up, to sing out their own magnificat of LGBT justice for all to hear. (Here’s an insider tip – start with Great Expectations for the Deans – bishops are not the only people in the hierarchy of the C of E).
  7. Oh, if only there were an actual international Anglican LGBT Network that was an official network of the Anglican Communion. So, why don’t we start working for one? There is much one can learn from other Provinces once you start buzzing about he world. A formal LGBT Network is the only real answer to that last Primates’ Communique that condemned homophobia, isn’t it? Sorry, I meant, “Isn’t it, Archbishop?”
  8. One of the things that I hope for is that Changing Attitude Scotland soon goes out of business and ceases to be. I’ve a feeling that I might struggle to find such sentiments in organisations in  England. Would campaigning organisations be prepared to sacrifice their own identity and existence if it brought about victory for the cause? I’ve a hunch that the current plethora of competing campaigns isn’t doing justice to Justice. Just a thought.
  9. If people don’t want to engage in campaigning in this way, they do in England have another unique option, which is to pray in the privacy of their hearts (or in public if they dare) for the Lord to bless Prince George with a love, when he grows up, of a fine young gentleman. A royal wedding might sort things out remarkably easily though we might have to wait 25 years for that to happen. Who knows whether that might be sooner than things might work out by other means?

I’ve a lot more that I’d like to say which may be best said more privately. However, the current attempt by the Church of England’s bishops to Sort Things Out by appointing a group of bishops which has neither any gay people nor any supporters of gay people on it does beg the question as to whether things are going well in that corner of the vineyard which thinks (quite incorrectly as it happens) that it is the origin of the Anglican Communion.

Change is coming, remember.

God’s goodness is never to be doubted.

And God is good, all the time.

Even now.

And even in England.