The question of gay and lesbian clergy has caused the Church of England's bishops to entangle themselves in moral and theological knots trying to make the issue go away. Action for Gay and Lesbian Ordination is making sure that it doesn't. Tim Robertson explains why he is involved in AGLO's campaign.
Christian churches in 1990s Britain do not generally find it easy to grab the attention of the public. But the one issue guaranteed to put the churches in the media spotlight is the very issue that most church leaders would like to hide away from - the question of their own clergy who are gay or lesbian. The debate has an especially high profile in the Church of England. This is partly because the nation is understandably fas- cinated with its established church. It is also because the Church of England's bishops have tied themselves up in moral and theological knots to try to get the issue to go away, often with hilarious results.
Christian churches in 1990s Britain do not generally find it easy to grab the attention of the public. But the one issue guaranteed to put the churches in the media spotlight is the very issue that most church leaders would like to hide away from - the question of their own clergy who are gay or lesbian. The debate has an especially high profile in the Church of England. This is partly because the nation is understandably fas- cinated with its established church. It is also because the Church of England's bishops have tied themselves up in moral and theological knots to try to get the issue to go away, often with hilarious results.
The current policy of the Anglican House of Bishops- set out in their 1991 report Issues In Human Sexuality - is that clergy are welcome to be gay or lesbian as long as they don't have sex with anyone of the same gender. Gay and lesbian activists have replied that this is a bit like saying that it is fine for people to be left-handed as long as they use only their right hand. Or-to make an analogy with racism- it is a bit like saying it is fine for clergy to be black as long as they make themselves look white.
What makes this worse is that the sexual standards set for everyone else in the church are quite different. Everyone, including clergy, is allowed to enter heterosexual marriage, and lay people, according to the Bishops' report, are also allowed to have long- term sexual partners of the same gender (though these partnerships remain excluded from marriage). It is only gay and lesbian clergy who are required to be celibate. So this is a policy which manages to create two double standards at once. It discriminates against gay and lesbian clergy compared both with their heterosexual colleagues in the priesthood and with their gay and lesbian parishioners. And yet, during the most recent debate on the issue in the General Synod, the Bishop of Oxford defended the policy specifically on the grounds that it is logically coherent and does not create a double standard.
What is it that makes intelligent and normally quite rational bishops behave in this irrational way? Two reasons spring to mind, and both of them are based on fear. Firstly, the Bishops are terrified of the division and conflict that they believe would spring up if real debate about sexuality were unleashed across the Church. This is why the basic aim of Issues In Human Sexuality is not to accept the range of opinions within the Church, but to pretend that the Bishops can come up with one policy to please everyone. It is hardly surprising that the report's argument is so incoherent. The second fear from which the Bishops are suffering is homophobia. This is the condition whose symptoms include all kinds of absurd and exaggerated fears about anyone who happens not to be heterosexual. It leads people to believe that there is something wrong about two people of the same gender having sex with one another.
What is particularly serious about the Bishops' homophobia is that they are in denial about it. The entire gay and lesbian community, who first identified the phenomenon of homophobia and who invented the word to describe it, recognises that the Church's attitude to gay clergy is homophobic. But, when a bishop is in front of any microphone or television camera, he will insist with no sense of hypocrisy at all that he is opposed to homophobia. The Bishops clearly genuinely believe that they know more about gay people than gay people know about themselves. They are like white people telling black people what it must feel like to experience racism.
Recognition of this phobia in the bishops is essential. The bishops would like us to confine this argument to a polite and low-key dialogue. But they cannot be healed of their phobia until they have at least begun to acknowledge it. They are not at the first stage of insight, never mind at the point of being able to formulate a coherent argument. It is not possible to engage in a rational discussion with people whose own position is completely irrational.
Action for Gay and Lesbian Ordination came into being in 1995 in order to develop an alternative approach. AGLO is a single issue campaign calling for justice for gay and lesbian clergy in the Church of England. Our membership is nation-wide and includes lesbians, bisexuals, heterosexuals and gay men, lay people and clergy. And, while we have on several occasions met with individual bishops to try to talk, we find that it is more effective to stand on cathedral steps with banners. Our demonstrations are peaceful and we have never "outed" any closeted gay people. Yet our presence at an ordination service or in front of General Synod has often sent waves of panic through bishops and their staff: it has helped expose the Church's phobia for all to see. Our approach is loud and cheerful. Our aim is to embarrass the bishops into growing up and getting real.
Of course there are more important issues in the world than gay and lesbian vicars. There is the possibility that our focus on clergy could feed into a top- heavy ecclesiology in which priests are seen as the essence of the church rather than as the facilitators for lay people. But Issues In Human Sexuality does cause real suffering. When people warn that this question could split the Church, it is important to remember that there is already a split running down the middle of the lives of gay and lesbian priests. The Bishops' policy forces many of these clergy into secrecy and fear, cutting off their public ministry from a fundamental part of their emotional and spiritual identity.
The problem does not stop at the Church door though. The attitude of the established church is a measure of and influence upon the moral temperature of the whole nation. Every time secular employers or landlords or teachers or parents choose to exclude or reject someone because that person is gay, they can feel reassured that they are following the example of the Church of England. For the bishops' policy makes quite clear that lesbians and gay men are to be treated as inferiors. The wording concocted by General Synod is that same-sex relationships "fall short of the ideal".
Fortunately, this influential position also creates opportunities. Once the Church of England stops discriminating against its gay clergy, homophobia will become much less tenable in other bastions of the British establishment. The Church's first step in this direction is likely an admission by the Bishops that they cannot always agree amongst themselves - that, if the Church cannot come to one mind on this question, then dioceses or parishes will have to decide locally whether or not to ordain individual gay men and lesbians. The final step will be to make marriage accessible to same-sex relationships: there is no other way to achieve equality between gay and heterosexual clergy. When the House of Bishops digs its heels in over the gay issue, or when it tries to cover its ears, this is precisely because the debate has such far-reaching consequences. Justice for gay and lesbian clergy will involve liberating the Church from the oppression of a supposedly unified Episcopal authority, and it will release marriage from the outmoded constrictions of heterosexism.
Fortunately, this influential position also creates opportunities. Once the Church of England stops discriminating against its gay clergy, homophobia will become much less tenable in other bastions of the British establishment. The Church's first step in this direction is likely an admission by the Bishops that they cannot always agree amongst themselves - that, if the Church cannot come to one mind on this question, then dioceses or parishes will have to decide locally whether or not to ordain individual gay men and lesbians. The final step will be to make marriage accessible to same-sex relationships: there is no other way to achieve equality between gay and heterosexual clergy. When the House of Bishops digs its heels in over the gay issue, or when it tries to cover its ears, this is precisely because the debate has such far-reaching consequences. Justice for gay and lesbian clergy will involve liberating the Church from the oppression of a supposedly unified Episcopal authority, and it will release marriage from the outmoded constrictions of heterosexism.
If gay and lesbian ordination is the issue that attracts the most media attention to the Church, then this is partly because it is the issue most likely to bring about radical change. It is up to those of us within the Church to exploit this potential to the full.
When this article was originally published in 1998, Tim Robertson was a London-based social worker, activist and writer.
When this article was originally published in 1998, Tim Robertson was a London-based social worker, activist and writer.
This article was originally published in Issue 98 of Movement magazine in 1998. You can read the full issue here.