Gay Marriage, Women Bishops and the Church of England

I have not been very excited about the idea of gay marriage. Being in a civil partnership, I always think of it as being a same-sex form of marriage, but without the historical, cultural and legal baggage. After all, when I interview people who want to get married I need to know if they are already in a civil partnership, because if they are, I cannot proceed with the marriage. On top of that, there is a mass of case law connected with annulment due to non-consummation which is meaningless in terms of civil partnerships.
What I would like is for the church to have the ability to bless relationships, to encourage love and faithfulness and to support the mutual society, help and comfort found in good relationships.

I know many members of the Church of England, and many who have an affection for the church of the people, who would like the church to bless civil partnerships, and many who would like marriage to be between people of the same sex, as well as between a man and a woman. I think the legislation could be complicated, but it would give the church a wonderful opportunity if this latter were to come to pass.

Once again the conservative evangelicals have pushed us all around. They pressurise the bishops, because the middle of the road majority just want to get on with things. These biblical troglodytes once again have cherry-picked verses from the scriptures to pretend that there is ONE biblical view of marriage. Which one, I would like to ask: is Abraham our ideal, or Solomon? Or should we listen to Jesus when he tells us to leave the family behind in following him? So they invent Christian Marriage out of a failure to read the Scriptures seriously and then lead us into darkness.

So the government, aware of the Orks lurking, but wanting to be seen as modern, create a situation in which the law of marriage for the first time in English history will be different in church from the rest of the state. This is saying to the Church of England, 'You no longer matter. You are an irrelevance, and you are to be cut out of the opportunity to pour grace into relationships which long for it.'

And who can blame the Government? They have seen this outrage in which the Dark Lord sent his minions into the Synod deliberately to prevent the will of the vast majority, the expressed will of the General Synod and of forty Diocesan Synods out of forty-two, to prevent its will, which surely is the will of the Holy Spirit, being done.

Who do these literalist flat-earthers think they are? Often well-funded organisations with money from the USA's fundamentalists, they have a confidence to push and bully. And the will of God is not done. The God who sees no difference between Male and Female is being thwarted by these book-worshippers, these people who treat the Bible as though it is the Qur'an.

Our Bishops must stop accepting such as ordinands, to spread the bigotry in churches. The Jesus whom we love and adore is the one whose arms are spread out in love to all people, but these want his hands bound, for him to stagger out of his tomb wrapped tightly in words and laws. But the wrappings were not there to bind him any longer and the resurrection is about overcoming these powers of darkness, of unloosing the chains of fundamentalism, and allowing the Holy Spirit to breathe her love across the world.