Gender justice and LGBT equality: Martyn Percy demands female cardinals and gay imams
by Archbishop Cranmer:
In another 5,000-word essay, the Very Rev’d Professor Martyn Percy, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, demands “a thorough and wholesale review” of discrimination in the Church of England. And by discrimination he means prejudiced attitudes expressed towards people because of their ‘identity’. And by identity he means those characteristics which are fundamentally ‘given’ (he specifies eye colour, hair colour, skin colour, etc), which is fair (and biblical) enough. He adds gender and sexuality, noting that transgender is now a ‘given’ identity, and “increasingly these days, sexuality is seen as a ‘given’, in the sense that it is a ‘natural orientation’, and not a lifestyle choice”.
You might discern where he’s going with this.
He tweeted his thesis out “With the aim and hope of promoting deeper and further reflection on the key theological and ecclesiolgical issues”, but it adds no deeper theology and no new ecclesiological insight at all. Indeed, an essay titled ‘Not a Matter of Opinion’ is precisely that: an assumed judgment; a passionate point of view. For a précis, see HERE (download option at the bottom). You could save a lot of time reading, however, because Dean Percy’s argument may be summarised thus:
1. Equality is a cornerstone of modern law.
2. It is wrong and bad to discriminate against people on the basis of their given identity.
3. Gender (/sex) and sexuality are ‘given’.
4. The Church of England discriminates on the basis of these ‘givens’.
5. This is wrong and bad and needs reform.
6. That reform must include discriminating against those who insist on discriminating.
He doesn’t call for traditionalists like Bishop Philip North to be ejected from the Church of England (“I do not think it ecclesially wise or in Christian charity to try and drive them out”), but he does demand that the church discriminate against them for their unacceptable discriminatory attitudes:
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