Gender Recognition Act: could reform be used to impose same-sex marriage on the Church of England?

Oct 18, 2018 by Jill

by Archbishop Cranmer:

“This week we will also complete our consultation on plans to reform the Gender Recognition Act,” the Prime Minister confirmed in her video message at the Pink News Awards last night.” There is a real desire reform, she explained, in order to tackle discrimination against LGBT people. The objective is that all couples – same-sex or opposite-sex – “are given the same choices in life”, which will bring redress for the “burning injustices” which LGBT people have suffered.

It is increasingly widely averred that one of those burning injustices to which LGBT people are subject is that the Church of England is prohibited by statute from performing services of same-sex marriage. The Marriage (Same Sex Couples Act) 2013 enshrined certain protections for clergy in the Church of England and the Church in Wales, to take account of the specific legal duty they have to marry parishioners. The exemption was a guarantee against imposition, and afforded the protection of Canon law. It didn’t privilege these churches, but ensured equality with every other religious community in the UK, which are at liberty to choose whether to perform same-sex weddings or not. The Church of England is free to do so, but it would require an Amending Canon to be brought to Synod to amend Canon law (along with a Measure to amend the Book of Common Prayer and primary legislation as necessary, all subject to parliamentary approval [which would not be withheld, by virtue of the Equality Act 2010]).

But the proposed reforms to the Gender Recognition Act 2004 may circumvent these protections.

Read here

Read also, from April 2004, Gender Benders by Robbie Low

Guess who’s coming to lunch – again by David Virtue, VOL