Vancouver-area Anglican bishop approves same-sex marriages

The Anglican bishop for the Metro Vancouver region has approved same-sex marriages in her diocese, beginning Thursday.

Bishop Melissa Skelton made the decision despite delegates of the national Anglican Church narrowly defeating the proposal during a July 12 vote at their general synod in Vancouver.

In the latest move in a worldwide Anglican conflict that has gone on for decades, Skelton seized on a compromise that the national church’s bishops offered a few days after the defeated vote, which would allow individual dioceses to adopt a “local option” on samesex marriage rites.

Many of the country’s Anglicans had been bitterly disappointed when the motion to allow same-sex marriages lost by the slimmest of margins earlier this month.

The synod vote had required a 66.6 per cent majority from each of the church’s three delegate groups: the laity, clergy and bishops. In a secret ballot the laity voted 80.9 per cent in favour and the clergy 73.2 per cent in favour. But the bishops of Canada defeated the motion, with two abstaining and just 62.2 per cent in favour.

In recent weeks several Anglican dioceses across the country, including on Vancouver Island and in southern Ontario, have also announced they will go ahead with samesex marriages as their local option.

Some bishops in the Anglican Church of Canada, which has roughly 500,000 members, have been allowing priests to perform “blessings” of same-sex unions since the early 2000s. But Canadian Anglican leaders have generally considered it another step to formally sanctify samesex marriages, something which the U.S. arm of the Anglican Church has endorsed in recent years.

Skelton said she authorized using a rite for same-sex marriages in her diocese, called New Westminster, beginning August 1 in the name of “making room” for diverse theological viewpoints.

Despite the pain many Anglicans on both sides of the marriage issue have been feeling in the past few weeks, Skelton said Monday that her aim is to “try to hold together” the different views that liberal, Indigenous and conservative Canadian Anglicans have on LGBQT issues.

Even though she has been home ill in recent weeks, Skelton said she had spent much of the day preparing the formal same-sex marriage rite that could be used throughout the diocese, beginning Thursday.