Gay marriage further thoughts

I sent this piece into The Guardian yesterday in a bid to get it into their Face to Faith Saturday column. As they did not use it I thought I would share it with readers of Notes from LE2. I think my current position is one of indifference to using the nomenclature of heterosexuality and I am quite happy with Civil Partnership for same sex couples and marriage for opposite sex couples. I am not sure I want all the baggage that heterosexual marriage seems to have accumulated. Nor am I happy with clergy telling the rest of us what we can and cannot do. I would never want to live in a theocracy of any religious stripe.

Draft for Face to Faith 8 October 2011

“I am for gay marriage – because I am a Conservative”, David Cameron’s words to the Conservative Party annual conference in Manchester may mark the real start of a British version on the culture wars that have plagued the USA for a number of years. Given the relatively small number of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people (say 7 or 8%) in the population as a whole and the ±50,000 civil partnerships that have been registered since the end of 2005, we are not talking big numbers but they are not without significance. Given the general indifference of the population to statements by religious leaders it seems likely that the gay marriage driven culture wars may not break out quite yet. Fundamentalist attacks from heteronormative, mostly Christian and Muslim, leaders on gays seem not to attract much general support currently but history shows that this can change.

Ever since the possibility of registering civil partnerships became a reality it has been my experience that to many people, both heterosexual and homosexual, they are seen as ‘marriages’.  For most people, the idea of a ‘civil partnership’ that looks like a wedding (invitations, register office, dressing up, rings, perhaps vows, witnesses, reception, cake) is a marriage. The only serious opposition seems to be coming from religious leaders who claim that marriage is reserved, in their view, for heterosexual people and can only be between a man and a woman. As a member of one of the most vocal of the anti-gay marriage faiths, I am also aware of the split between the official line given out by some, but only some, church leaders and at the local level, clergy and laity who are often supportive. In the RC church this matches the split over contraception where the official line is against and at local the pastoral level where there is almost total silence from the clergy and widespread use of family planning by the laity. This split, if to a lesser extent than contraception, is even to be seen in the hottest pro-life issue, abortion, where it is reported that even practising Catholics are much more tolerant than the official line of total opposition.

Until now, the bitterness of the USA’s culture wars has not been that present in the UK, except in the blogs of the Telegraph. The usual response to a same sex couple announcing their intended civil partnership is one of general pleasure and support. Although a small grouping and hardly mainstream, the Society of Friends (Quakers) has consistently led the field for change most recently by wanting approval for same sex marriages to be solemnized in the context of Meetings for Worship. Currently, civil partnerships, like register office heterosexual weddings, have to be devoid of any religious element – even if this is pushed to the limits in practice with neo-religious readings and pious comments from registrars. Although it is hard to foresee a time when Catholic gay/lesbian couples wanting Nuptial Masses and blessings will be celebrated in public. In the Anglican Church, as with the remarriage of divorced people, some clergy will preside over gay/lesbian marriages and some will not. Catholic sacramental theology and canon law sees the ‘ministers’ in a marriage as the couple. This is why the individuals in the couple have to say the words at the heart of the ritual – they do not need a clergy-person if push comes to shove on the mythical clergy-less desert isand. The job of the clergy-person is to preside over the ritual and act as keeper of the official register; the couple marry each other.

The sadness of the anti-gay marriage position taken by some Catholic bishops is their inability to see that same sex marriage is not an attack on the sacrament of marriage but a desire to share in the grace it brings; grace that includes the blessings on and social/community support for the relationship. God knows, sustaining a relationship is difficult enough for both opposite and same sex couples. They need all the graces available.