Overview and Inner View

Two archbishops wrestle what some insist on calling the Gay Issue to the ground. The overview comes from Nobel Laureates led by former Archbishop Desmond Tutu

The same cultural values, which have fostered and supported our lifelong quests for peace, also command us to speak out against the violence and discrimination our fellow human beings are enduring every day solely because they are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex. In many of our countries the influence of colonial era laws still makes outlaws of LGBTI people. Recent legislative efforts like those underway in Russia and Uganda could pose even more sinister sanctions on LGBTI people as well their allies, ourselves included. The criminalization of adult, consensual homosexuality in any form is unacceptable. And, we must remain vigilant even in countries that rightly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, to ensure that LGBTI citizens are effectively protected from the hatred and bigotry that persists.”

The bigger context is persecution and violence LGBT people face around the world. We must hang our heads in shame where anyChurch leaders  have colluded with or even promoted it. The kind of “unity” you purchase with one brother by spitting in the face of another, or even turning a blind eye, is not worth having.  It is sub-Christian.

Also last week, Archbishop Rowan was hobnobbing with young people at Lambeth Palace and observing with painful accuracy the tangles the Church has got itself into over the status of women and marriage equality. He went on to say:

What’s frustrating is that we still have Christian people whose feelings about it are so strong, and sometimes so embarrassed and ashamed and disgusted, that that just sends out a message of unwelcome, of lack of understanding, of lack of patience. So whatever we think about it, we need, as a Church, to be tackling what we feel about it.”

This is no complex theological puzzle with little silver balls in it. All we have to do is apply the Golden Rule, the Lord's summary of the Law, the call from St John to love the God we have never seen by loving the person we have, in other words, the basics. The Church is not a place these apply differently, or even do not apply, but the place they should be so vibrantly applied that the world may believe.

That, not liberalism or missional credibility is the issue that calls for the courage to name cultural embarrassment, shame and disgust for what they are — cultural foibles — rather than reading them into the Bible, reading it back out again and using our conclusions as a soft cosh against gay neighbours.

Our dirty little secret is that there is no gay issue. Our embarrassment and secrecy is a symptom of our own, oft unacknowledged, yuk factor and hypocrisy — something Jesus warned us about all along. He defied the stranglehold of any obsession with ritual purity, and teaches us the rules were made for people, not people for the rules. The Sermon on the Mount is not given us as a Postdoctoral proposal, or a discussion starter, but a way of life. Just do it. Then people will hear the voice of Jesus in our Churches, instead of the scribes and pharisees. Then the appearance we give will be the one we can't help giving, given the reality of who we are and how we see things.

When we stop believing gay people are an issue, and start seeing them as people, anyone will find a genuine welcome not hand-wringing, deep seated prejudice masked by niceness, and cheesy grins to get ’em in, applied with cheap theatrical gum.