Queerguru’s Brit Editor was brought up in a Methodist orphanage where religion was not just a Sunday affair.  He also attended a Protestant junior school in the local village that was attached to a Church led by a High Anglican priest who seemed to have earthly religious ambitions that I think we were expected to help enable for him. It was all very white and very Christian in the days when the nearest thing that would be considered ‘extremists’ in those peace-loving days, a mere decade since WW2 had ended, were the town’s Quakers! 

I thought with my Church Choir medal, and some 10 years of Sunday School behind me, I was probably, if not by default, a Christian, but frankly, it never really entered my very messy, jumbled thoughts at the time.  When I came out as gay,  one of the many things I test drove was the gay Metropolitan Community Church.  Well, it was way before any form of online dating, but sadly, it worked out that neither God nor the Church leader, was there to play matchmaker.

In all seriousness it wasnt until my partner of some 10 years was diagnosed with HIV in the mid 1980s which proved fatal, that I lost any belief that may have remained since my childhood.  How could any so called God let my partner and so very many innocent young  men die so prematurely, and in such pain?

Whilst when it comes to having any sort religious belief or convinction I am still quite numb, but I do sympathise with any LGBQT+ person who is religuous …. and in partictualr Christian ….. and who stiil waits for any sort of geniune acceptance by the Church.  I believe it will never happen, and so I get angry with little tidbits of ‘news’ show their true colors.

Just like this week when  the House of Bishops — one of three legislative houses in the Anglican Church’s General Synod — placed new restrictions on  giving blessings to same-sex couples that are already married.  Evdently in 2023 they agreed on  Prayers of Love and Faith a document outlining blessings for same-sex as as part of the Church’s “Living in Love and Faith” project.  Now the bishops have ruled that priests may not perform PLF blessings in standalone, or “bespoke,” services without approval from a two-thirds majority of all three houses of the Synod, per the Church’s “Canon B2” law. 

I don’t know if we are meant to feel grateful for the fact that some clergy members of the Church of England are saying they witll defy the decision  with one priest calling the Bishop’s decision “illegitimate.”  Same-sex marriage has been protected in England, where the Church is headquartered, since 2013. Conservatives in the Church hope that incoming Archbishop Sarah Mullally — the first woman to hold the Church’s highest office — will side with traditional religious doctrine against same-sex marriage when she is confirmed in January, though Mullally has spoken in favor of blessing those unions in the past.  

Sitting on the sidelines it seems that the Bishops cannot stop using the Bible as Google  picking out the phases that help their personal arguments,  But we can all do that ….for example  here’s John 13:34: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another”.