CKNW Editorial
for December 27, 2000

My church, the Anglican Church of Canada is, like many churches, going through some agonies about homosexuality. In what seems to outsiders as a rather strange process, the Anglican Diocese of New Westminster two years ago approved the blessing of homosexual unions but the Archbishop Michael Ingham, instead of rubberstamping the notion, took it under advisement. Now the archbishop has approved a liturgy for such blessings but has not approved its use. Sort of like giving your kid a new car and holding back the keys. But churches are not meant to be especially democratic – after all the country isn’t either – and the issue will continue to smolder.

I, like many Anglicans, have trouble with the notion of blessing homosexual unions but my concerns are a little different from those usually heard.

I do not believe homosexuality is a sin within the Anglican view of such matters. It does not qualify as one under the Mosaic one which has ten pretty specific no-noes nor does it come within any stretch of the two laid down by Jesus who taught us that all the law and the prophets requires us to love God and love our neighbours as ourselves. As a Christian – my version thereof I grant you – I look to what Jesus said, not what some people infer from what he said – as the core of my faith and Jesus said nothing about homosexuality. This is important, I think, because it surely must have been just as prevalent 2000 years ago as it is today.

My problem is with the blessing of the homosexual union but this has nothing to do with sin and everything to do with what interference both the Church and State are permitted in the lives of communicants and citizens. I warned you, didn’t I, that my approach was a bit off the wall. You see I think that the only reason the church ever got into the marrying business was to ensure its own perpetuation. This wasn’t a doctrinal matter at all but a way of ensuring the Church’s continues existence by the procreation of children. Of course it married people beyond child bearing years but it recognized the impracticality of fertility tests, especially thousands of years ago and a one size fits all ceremony made sense.

Similarly, indeed with more force, I make the argument that the only right the government has in the sexual affairs of its citizens is for purposes of continuation of the state. Indeed students of legal history will know that this is the only reason the state began to usurp the right of the church to marry and dissolve marriages in the first place.

Of course things have changed as they always do. Along came a thing called entitlements. And the government, with the moralistic attitude of the day, declared that these entitlements were for the married only. This attitude didn’t break down because of homosexuals but because of common-law relationships and illegitimate children. In any event, governments federal and provincial got heavily into the business of compensating people in relationships as opposed to marriages and are now faced with extending these tax funded benefits not only to gays but, one must presume, parents and children, brothers and sisters and presumably just good pals who live together.

But back to my church. Archbishop Ingham is just one of our leaders confounded by the problem of what to do about gay relationships and I will, today, presume to offer some advice.

First, Michael – we are I think on a first name basis and we Anglicans are pretty flip about that sort of thing – the first thing I would do is utterly ignore those who put this question on a moral basis. Let him, or her, who is without sin etc … There is not an Anglican in the world who is not steeped in sin. In my view the judge of sin is in heaven not in the office of any priest, however high up the hierarchy he may be. I know of some who have left the church already and there certainly will be more to come if you agree to bless same sex unions. You are, as you know, bound to do the right thing not please the masses.

Secondly, I think the question is a practical not a moral one. Morally, there is nothing wrong and everything right about a church blessing all legitimate undertakings. If having a homosexual relationship is not contrary to the rules Jesus laid down, it is one whose success can be legitimately blessed. After all, countless warships were blessed during wartime and I should think that a mission to kill, however legal, would cause more concern than blessing folks who live together.

Thirdly, and this follows logically I think, it is a political matter not a temporal one. Does our church wish to extend the unions it blesses from those which produce little Anglicans to other relationships? Is this an appropriate area for the church to interfere in the private relations of communicants?

I have come to the conclusion, with some difficulty, that it is. While it is probably difficult – you Michael will know the answer to this – for the church to justify interference on the basis of the need for stable relationships, I think this responsibility clearly falls within any church’s broad mandate. In a way this flows logically from the willingness of our church to remarry divorced persons.

The homosexual community is an identifiable group in society becoming more and more identifiable every day. It is generally the wish, I think, of the homosexual community to have a church blessing available. Their practices not being sinful by our standards the only argument against a blessing of their union is that other Anglicans might not like it.

That’s an important consideration. No priest wants to preside over the dissolution of his church. But still you must do what is right.

Which brings me – mercifully I can hear you mutter – to my last point. If you do what in your heart you believe is the right thing, that ends the matter. In all likelihood the Communion will support you and probably for everyone you lose you’ll gain proportionally. For what little consolation this will bring, the two Anglicans in our house will support you.