Christians have appealed to government ministers to block plans to allow gay couples the right to have civil partnership ceremonies in church.
You know it’s striking how many news items featured on PinkNews are related to Christian activity.
Anyway, they drew my attention to this:
Christians protest over religious civil partnerships
Christians have appealed to government ministers to block plans to allow gay couples the right to have civil partnership ceremonies in church.
They fear that the proposal will force church leaders to hold civil partnerships and leave them open to legal action if they do not.
The campaign is being organised by anti-gay group Christian Concern for Our Nation (CCFON), which delivered a 6,000-strong petition to Downing Street today against the plan.
It would give faiths the option of holding the ceremonies and would not be compulsory. The Quakers, Unitarian Church and Liberal Judaism have all expressed their wishes to hold the events.
However, Christian traditionalists have seized on a remark made by Stonewall chief executive Ben Summerskill in November.
He told PinkNews.co.uk: “Right now, faiths shouldn’t be forced to hold civil partnerships, although in ten or 20 years, that may change.”
This has even hit the BBC news service:
This is the “action” blurb from CCFON:
I will now refer you to an astute Young Mr. Brown’s comments on this matter, which were republished on this blog:
If the Quakers and the Unitarians want to register civil partnerships in their places of worship, then that is a matter for them, and not for the state. Traditional Christians will be horrified at such things happening, but their horror should be directed not at the state for permitting these things, but at the Quakers and Unitarians for wishing to do them. If traditional Christians want freedom to proclaim that homosexual activity is wrong, and to exclude practising homosexuals from their membership, then they should be willing to allow freedom to religious bodies which think otherwise.
Indeed!
Tags: Christianity, Law Moral Ethical, Politics
March 23rd, 2010 at 9:19 pm
The last comment you quoted seemed curious. Surely Christians have no power to prevent anyone doing anything they like, because they have no secular power? Indeed they have so little power that even practising their own beliefs in their own churches is something they are being told is only on sufferance, and only for now. Which Christians are demanding that the police force unitarians not to do this or that? None, of course. So the commenter is doing a typical “black=white, white=black” schtick on us. I suppose those determined to engage in persecution do tend to try to demonise their enemies first.
Quite why Christians should not demand that groups using the name of Christ follow his teachings is not explained, of course.
But I imagine the comment is merely a demand that Christians stop saying that endorsing this particular sin is anti-Christian, and backed with a threat of persecution. Nasty.
March 23rd, 2010 at 9:21 pm
Oh. Of course I missed the connecting link: the “Christians have appealed to government ministers to block plans to allow gay couples the right to have civil partnership ceremonies in church.”
The reporting is disingenuous. The plans really are to make it possible for gay couples to drag any clergyman who refuses into court. Not quite the same thing, eh?
If we didn’t know that homosexuality was a sin, we would learn so from the methods those advocating it choose to use.