Stonewall UK CEO offers rationale for LGBT Inclusion
By David W. Virtue, DD, Virtueonline:
The CEO of Stonewall (UK) Ruth Hunt, a Roman Catholic, told an audience in Leicester Cathedral recently that the sooner the Vatican gets a gay network group, the better. She also blasted the Church of England for its attitude towards LGBT people as “unforgiveable”.
“We can actually start making some progress! The Church of England should be better than this. It’s how it works. It should be able to cope with dissent and disagreement – good disagreement. I spoke to Synod last year- some of you may have been there. I was slightly undercover, in that I didn’t tell Stonewall I was doing it! — and I thought ‘This suits you. This indecisiveness suits how you work.’ And we need to be better than that.”
Hunt blasted the Church of England and said the thing that breaks her heart about the CofE is that the issue of the inclusion of LGBT people is a proxy for a bigger discussion. “I don’t think it’s really just about LGBT issues, and I find their weakness unforgiveable. I would find their defiant opposition more palatable than their weakness. That’s where my anger has reached. Catholics are a mess of contradiction. Catholics have always been a mess of contradiction.”
Hunt, A Welsh Roman Catholic, heads Stonewall, a secular lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights charity in the UK named after the Stonewall Inn of Stonewall riots in New York City’s Greenwich, whose motto is acceptance without exception.
She told her Anglican audience that we need to be louder, and that the time for polite dissent and disagreement is passing.
“I think we should be angry about the way in which people are excluded from our communities, and I think that we should find a way to express that anger with love and respect. This should not be done in the name of Jesus and it should not be done in the name of God,” she said.
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
