Rowan Williams seems to be having some misgivings about the developing anti-gay pogrom in his church…

Church must be ‘safe place’ for gay and lesbian people, Archbishop of Canterbury says

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, has said that the churches of the Anglican Communion must be safe places for gay and lesbian people. His comments come in a welcome to an interim report on the Anglican Communion’s Listening Process, a commitment to listen to the experience of homosexual people.

Williams warns that the challenge to create the safe space for the voices of gay and lesbian people to be heard and for their dignity to be respected is based on a fundamental commitment of the Communion.

"The commitments of the Communion are not only to certain theological positions on the question of sexual ethics but also to a manifest and credible respect for the proper liberties of homosexual people, a commitment again set out in successive Lambeth Conference Resolutions over many decades," he said. "I share the concerns expressed about situations where the Church is seen to be underwriting social or legal attitudes which threaten these proper liberties.

The problem of course, is that even the local homophobes really don’t give a rat’s ass anymore what Williams thinks, never mind the ones in Africa…

Bishop blocks gay youth worker’s job

A leading bishop has fuelled the controversy over the Church of England and equality after being accused of refusing to employ a youth worker because he is gay.

The Bishop of Hereford, the Right Reverend Anthony Priddis, blocked the appointment of John Reaney, 41, Reaney’s lawyers say, despite the unanimous decision of an interview panel, including two vicars, to give him the job.

Reaney, from north Wales, claims he had been told after the interview that confirmation that he had got the job from Priddis was just a formality. Instead he was subjected to embarrassing and intimate questions about his private life before being informed by letter that he could not be offered the job because he was a practising homosexual.

On Wednesday the bishop will appear before an employment tribunal in Cardiff to defend his decision. In the first case of its kind, his lawyers are expected to argue that lay appointments by the Church of England should be exempt, as are clerical posts, from anti-discrimination laws.

Anni Holden, a spokeswoman for the Diocese of Hereford, said: ‘We expect the same sexual standards of behaviour from our support ministers or lay ministers as we do of clergy.’ The standard they expect is based on a statement from the House of Bishops in the Nineties which said it was acceptable for staff to be gay but that they must remain celibate.

Reaney’s lawyers will argue that his rejection was based purely on his sexuality, and heterosexual staff were never asked similar questions about their private lives.

The case will highlight the controversy in the Church of England facing Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, below, and could exacerbate the conflict between Christian beliefs and equality laws that are aimed at protecting the rights of gay and lesbian people.

Ironically enough, the problem facing his church, and Christianity itself these days, is pretty neatly summed up by Williams himself…

No-one reading this report can be complacent about such a situation, and the Church is challenged to show that it is truly a safe place for people to be honest and where they may be confident that they will have their human dignity respected, whatever serious disagreements about ethics may remain.

But it is precisely the human dignity of homosexuals that people in his church are having "serious disagreements" about, not ethics.  How you answer the ethical questions depends on how you answer the fundamental question of the humanity and dignity of homosexual people.  If you think homosexuals are some kind of human vermin, a cancer on the church, then you’re sure as hell not going to make your church a safe place for them.  And you’re not going to want anyplace outside the church be a safe place for them either.  Your calculation is simple: wherever homosexuals are safe, nobody else is.  Therefore, homosexuals cannot be safe anywhere.  You are going to do everything in your power to sweep them into the gutter where you think they belong, for the sake of your church, and your community.  Well…really…for the sake of your cheapshit prejudices.  But this is what Anglican archbishop Peter Akinola, is encouraging the government of his country to do.  It is what the Americans who have now aligned with him would wish their government could.  A safe place for homosexuals is the last thing these people want.  They want a purge, and not just in the church pews either.

The really sad thing is that even in this new document, Williams cannot bear to actually take a stand For the human dignity of gay people.  At a glance it seems that he is, but by glossing over the nature of the serious disagreement he’s undercutting the very stand he would like everyone to think he’s making.  You can’t simultaneously insist that the human dignity of gay people must be respected, and at the same time agree that it is debatable.