What do supporters of same-sex marriage believe and why?

Feb 5, 2016 by Jill

By Ian Paul, Psephizo:

Andrew Goddard offers his analysis of the recent survey:

Despite all our Shared Conversations, it remains largely a mystery as to what people in the Church of England really believe about same-sex marriage.Jayne Ozanne has just published a survey which claims to shed new light on this by identifying Anglicans in England and finding more of them believe same-sex marriage is right than believe it is wrong.

It is of course important that any such findings are simply descriptive not prescriptive. Christians do not believe the voice of the people, even church people, is the voice of God. Scripture is full of examples where God was at work through his apostles and prophets and indeed his Messiah to correct the majority viewpoint among his people. But good description is also immensely valuable in Christian discernment.

The primary challenge here is identifying “Anglicans in England” and the survey offers two answers – a larger one and a subset of that. There are major questions about each group.

[…] A more detailed analysis of the poll can be found with a copy of this article on the Fulcrum website. It is worth noting that American social scientist Mark Regnerus found an almost identical correlation amongst US supporters of SSM.

There is some irony that today sees the launch of LGBTI Mission in part on the back of this survey. They are pressing for unilateral changes to the Church’s teaching and practice, disregarding all the current processes of discussion and consultation, and without any reference to theological concerns. In their press release they note:

Critics of the poll argue that it does not qualify affiliation, for example, by asking how often respondents attend church. The 2013 polling explored this last question and found that support [for same-sex marriage] was lowest among those who attended most often.

So they are pressing the Church to adopt a position that, by their own admission, most represents the view of those who don’t attend.

Read here

Read also: There’s nowt so queer as queer marriage by Peter Mullen