Gay marriage here to stay, says bishop

Jun 14, 2016 by Jill

from Cayman News:

An Anglican bishop has pointed out that nothing bad happened in the UK after the introduction of same-sex marriage two years ago and that the Church of England is slowly accepting the concept. Delivering a keynote speech at the ‘Queering Paradigms’ conference on Sunday evening, the Rt Rev Alan Wilson used the Bible and the teachings of Christ to challenge the discrimination and fears held by many Christians about same-sex unions. He said that with around 1.4 billion people in the world now having access to gay marriage, the “toothpaste wasn’t going back in the tube”.

Rev. Wilson said it was merely a matter of time before the controversy surrounding gay and transgender unions would turn to acceptance everywhere, even in his church.

Speaking about the concept of ‘queer theory’, an academic area challenging traditional concepts of binary genders and other ideas around sexuality, he described it as a daring and rebellious form of thinking about who we are and assumptions about fixed gender.

Although the conference was an academic gathering, Wilson delivered a speech that went to the heart of prejudices surrounding same-sex unions. He challenged the idea that the church has to be against same-sex unions and pointed out that Jesus himself challenged many norms of the time, even the concept of family, which many believe is fundamental to Christianity.

Given the lack of reference in the Bible to same-sex relationships and none at all about women, he also suggested that the concept of a patriarchal family had more to do with culture and society than Christianity and maintained that prejudiced viewpoints had nothing to do with God.

Read here

Editor’s note: Bishop Wilson and his supporters fail to see that the ‘daring and rebellious’ ideas which they believe they are so courageous in espousing, are the same as those being relentlessly promoted by the British establishment of which he is part, and the dominant cultural forces of the West. The irony is that Bishop Wilson is simply parroting the most conventional and bourgeois views of contemporary middle class society.

See more about the background to the Conference here