Free at Last?

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Now that the funeral's done (and all went well TBTG), I can muse a wee bit on the recent passing of an Act in Scotland to permit Same Sex Marriage.  I'm glad it's happened and particularly so as it more or less completes the Agenda a wee group of us drew up in 1990 as a White paper for YSLD (Young Scottish Liberal Democrats) whose Vice Convenor I then was.  Equal Age of Consent? Check.  Anti-discrimination legislation? Check.  Legal recognition of relationships? Check in two stages.  Recommendation that the State not compel religious bodies to act against their conscience? Check.  So that's it all done and dusted? 

No, not really.  Now the Church has to start thinking about how it intends to respond to the legal changes. And by Church I mean the Scottish Episcopal Church.  What the rest do is their business, not mine.  Our submission to the Parliament during the consultation process was something of a "cop out".  It more or less said that as Canon Law currently stands we define marriage as being between a man and a woman and consequently we would not be able to conduct weddings for Same Sex Couples.  It really didn't point out that we can, following due Synodical process, change Canon Law and would be able to be in a position to conduct Same Sex marriages 3 years from when we started the ball rolling.  We did no ball rolling before the Bill went through, so we'll be at least 3 years behind the rest of Scottish Society were we to start at this years General Synod.  Which is actually pretty speedy for the Church, which any well taught sociologist will tell you is an essentially conservative social institution in function and operation.  I'd rather we'd been proactive in getting ready for this but am not at all surprised that we haven't been.

Currently, as Canon Law stands, I won't be able to do a Same Sex Wedding like I can a mixed sex one.  I'm perfectly happy so to do but the Law requires that Churches as bodies opt in and not just individual clergy.  I tend to agree that that's right and certainly for us Pisky clergy, who claim to be part of the One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, that's how it ought to be.  We are a college of Bishops, Priests and Deacons and not a Cocktail of Congregationalists (if that's the right collective noun - and if it's not, it should be!).  As far as I am concerned the next step for us is to amend Canon law, opt in as a Church and then allow those clergy who in all conscience cannot conduct such marriages to opt out, as is their legal right enshrined in the new legislation.  So, having changed the World, let us now change the Church!

Social Revolution and Speedy Gonzales.

This particular train of thought had an odd start - I was watching Speedy Gonzales cartoons yesterday afternoon at work (it WAS work - supporting a service user, honest guv!) and was slightly baffled for a moment by the disclaimer at the beginning of the DVD which said : "The cartoons you are about to see are products of their time. They may depict some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that were commonplace in American society. These depictions were wrong then and are wrong today. While the following does not represent the WB (Warner Brothers) view of society, these cartoons are being presented as they were originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as to claim these prejudices never existed".

As I watched the cartoons I laughed heartily.  I always enjoyed Glen Michael's Cartoon Cavalcade as a child.  But as I watched I was aware that some of the stuff I laughed at quite innocently as a kid in the late 70's/early 80's would not really be stuff anyone would find comfortably amusing today.  The assumption of what Mexicans were like apart from heroic Speedy were pretty demeaning.  As I thought about it I realised  that I've lived through quite a social revolution without really noticing it for much of the time - and certainly not while it was happening.  I was born in the year homosexuality was decriminalised in the UK and abortion was legalised.  The Race Relations and Equal Opportunities Acts were passed when I was at Primary School.  Today, I'm watching a country in which Same Sex marriage will almost certainly be made legal very shortly.

Social revolutions are a bit of a mystery in some ways.  They seem to occur when ideas gain a currency and momentum that is irresistible.  this comes certainly through campaigning, which looks and sounds lunatic fringe at the beginning but which gradually comes to be the mindset of the majority.  Which is kinda what happened with Christianity.  The dangerous, socially destabilising fringe Jewish cult that Sanhedrin and procurator alike pursued with the death penalty gradually became mainstream and then majority.  Of course, the pendulum of history is gradually swinging again (not that it's ever still) and Christianity is losing it's"establishment" and majority status in the UK.  That why the likes of the retired Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey and the like have been railing against the Same Sex marriage legislation at Westminster from the privileged perch in the Lords.  They can see Christian influence declining in the counsels of the body politic and they don't like it when the Church's opinion is ignored.  Of course, if the Established Church hadn't been so ungracious about Civil Partnerships and positively stupid about the recent Women Bishop's legislation in the last few years, the Body Politic might have been more inclined to listen to them.  it's better tuned to the nuances of social evolution then the English House of Bishops.

A Right Rammy.

 Cardinal Keith O'Brien.

I am not inclined to jump into an ongoing public stooshie too often, but it strikes me that my local RC Heirach has gone off rather loudly in public on the subject of Same Sex Marriage. See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9122961/Gay-marriage-is-like-slavery-Catholic-leader-says.html for further details  My objections are not to his saying what he said - after all, it's a free country and he is an RC Archbishop, so was scarcely likely to give it anything like a ringing endorsement, as that isn't the line RC theology or ethics take.  No, it's more that I find his allegory with the re-introduction of slavery singularly inappropriate - the proposal is to give freedom to LGBT people to wed their best beloveds, not to deprive those who want to marry a person of the other gender of their freedom to marry.  I also find his intemperate language frankly offensive.  But it seems odd to me that this is the same Archbishop who back in 2000 appointed an RC chaplain to the Scotland 2000 Conference on Christianity and LGBT issues and sent a fairly supportive message to encourage it's dialogue.  I seem to recall that I was on the the steering committee at the time!  Either he's radically changed his mind through some spiritual or intellectual epiphany or reflection (which could perhaps say in public - closer contact with Pope Benedict and his thinking might have had this effect) or that Red Hat he got has  radically changed his sense of what it is to be a Bishop of the RC Church and made him more Ultramontane in his pronouncements than in days of yore.  Archbishop Nichols in Westminster seems to be rather more efficient at communicating the Party Line without gratuitously offending a heck of a lot of people.  As this shows http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2012/02/28/archbishop-nichols-reaffirms-soho-masses-after-criticism/  Mind you, the comments column suggest there are a fair pochle of bigoted and viciously homophobic RC laity and clergy who read the Catholic herald.  Is it the Daily Mail for the Pope's 1st XI?