Steve Bell in the Guardian had a cartoon, see Your equality laws are unjust, pope tells UK before visit.
Listen to Archbishop Peter Smith of Cardiff, speaking on Vatican Radio in Rome on Tuesday.
The Guardian published this editorial comment on Wednesday: Equalities legislation: The pope protests.
The Question of the Week at Cif:belief has been Does faith trump equality? (This was started on Monday, before the Pope spoke.)
In response to the Pope incident, Martin Pendergast wrote at Cif: belief All of us deserve equality.
And Simon Jenkins wrote An odious view, indeed. But I’m with Pope Benedict on this one.
The Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks wrote in The Times The Pope is right about the threat to freedom.
The Archbishop of York gave a lecture, in Newcastle, titled Gracious Magnanimity vs. Tolerance. You can read the full text of that here.
In his article the Bishop of Winchester says of the Church “…we have argued consistently for a long time for the second version of a liberal society – one where difference is allowed to flourish and is not subjected to a single version of morality imposed on everyone.” I trust that the gay and lesbian partnered clergy and lay people in the Diocese of Winchester (and other Dioceses in the C of E) find this to really be the case. +Winchester and some of his colleagues seem to have consistently argued that there IS a single version of morality concerning… Read more »
“In the passage of the equality bill, the Church of England has repeatedly expressed its support for the aims and objectives of the bill. We do not believe that people should be discriminated against on grounds of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, marital status, religion or belief.” – The Lord Bishop of winchester – Can the Bishop’s tongue really be so far into his cheek that it appears to have exited the cheek and wrapped around his neck and strangled him? I cannot recall one statement from this Bishop that ever affirmed the place of L.G.B. or T persons within the… Read more »
I’m glad to see the Bishop of Winchester has read his J Neville Figgis, perhaps mediated by my late lamented friend David Nicholls. But the C of E is a somewhat late convert to his views, and the bishop must surely realise the logic of the Pluralist State is disestablishment. Perhaps he’s right in saying the balance was wrong. I suppose the lines drawn now will continue to need testing in the courts but I agree with Jonathan Bartley that much damage is done by being seen as the Church of “opt outs”. As a judge friend of mine said…having… Read more »
Philosophically I am (ironically) on the same page as the church folk here (eg Archbishop of York). Equally, a lot of the people I end up on the same side in the arguments we have would not agree with this viewpoint (they would no doubt state that this is merely to make concessions to bigotry and after the Pope’s recent and not so recent interventions I have sympathies for this view). The way that I’ve put it in the past is to emphasise the principle of negotiation between groups of people around their needs and so there’s a degree of… Read more »
Gay people are already (and always have been) in all the so-called ‘exempt posts’.
But is ‘Don’t ask Don’t tell’ really an ethical basis for the treatment of those of us from minorities ?
What of our current C of E bishops who happen to be gay, and other ministers ?
If we adopt Rabbi Sacks distinction between English-American vs French Revolution iterations of rights and religion for a passing moment, I then would surmise that the good rabbi has failed to apply this very distinction to the Pope’s preachments. The current Vatican’s antigay sermonizing is much more tilted towards the animosities, punitiveness, and cruel-inhuman perfectionizing forces of the worst of that French Revolution, than not. This pope clearly needs to mistreat queer folks, for their own good, lots of the time. He wants us to be mean, too. The hoarse religion cries danger to justify the meanness it stands ready… Read more »
Big picture but off topic:
We consistently hear on these blog threads that no evidence does exist or can exist for biology of sexual orientation, when in fact the real truth is something else categorically. USA’s Psychology Today blog articles summarize the biology and other research facts rather clearly.
See: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/200906/could-homosexual-genes-be-naturally-selected
See: http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200804/finding-the-switch
From now on, I suggest that any poster who wishes to repeat the No Biology Evidence trope must first show how he or she has read the two linked articles, as well as the extended research bibliographies they summarize?
Most of this comment emphasizes procedural matters, paragraphs about competing rights, balancing rights, and the dire dangers of fairness as a controlling value that can – must? – shove religion out of public life. But of course this is mainly about queer folks, so far as these religions go – so sidestepping the pesky hot button queer folks is not all that helpful. Let alone helpful to erect grand structure of abstract theorizing, which is in fact mainly about what church and/or society does with its queer folks. The comments fail because queer folks as decent-good citizens are the invisible… Read more »