Lambeth: Why gay marriage is ‘great’
LAMBETH PALACE is rushing to deny the Archbishop of Canterbury’s view on same-sex marriage has changed, after a gay newspaper reported the Most Rev Justin Welby said it was ‘great’.
In his first interview with a gay publication, the Archbishop said to Pink News it was ‘right and proper’ that same-sex marriage came into law, “and that’s great”.
But officials at Lambeth soon released a statement to stress Justin Welby still affirms the Church of England’s official stance on the changes to marriage.
The comments came days after the Church’s report into homophobic bullying was launched, with guidelines sent to Church of England schools across the country to tackle the problem.
Pink News urged the Archbishop to answer whether gay people are ‘failures’ to him.
“No I’m not saying that at all, but all people are failures in many different ways.
“There is no one who is a complete success in their life in which everything is right.
“Therefore the love of Christ is universal for all people irrespective of who they are and the Church has to find a way of expressing that.”
Last week, the Bishop of Gloucester broke ranks in apologising for the House of Bishops’ statement on same-sex marriage, saying it was unnecessarily harsh and the feelings of those concerned was not given enough respect.
In the Pink News interview, Justin Welby said: “As you know I have said, and got a fair amount of flak for it within parts of the Church, we have to accept, and quite rightly, that the Same-Sex Marriage Act is law, and that it’s right and proper, it’s the law of the land, and that’s great.”
A spokesman for Lambeth Palace said: “The Archbishop has said numerous times that he accepts the right of Parliament to change the law and that the Church should continue to demonstrate the love of Christ for every person.
“The Archbishop voted against the Same-Sex Marriage Act in the House of Lords last year.”
They said the reference to “great” was in relation to Parliament’s ability to change the law. BISHOP GENE Robinson has announced that he is divorcing his spouse Mark Andrew.
In a column printed in the Daily Beast on 3 Mary 2014, Bishop Robinson stated: “Recently, my partner and husband of 25-plus years and I decided to get divorced. While the details of our situation will remain appropriately private, I am seeking to be as open and honest in the midst of this decision as I have been in other dramatic moments of my life—coming out in 1986, falling in love, and accepting the challenge of becoming Christendom’s first openly gay priest to be elected a Bishop in the historic succession of bishops stretching back to the apostles.”
The Episcopal Church’s first “out” gay bishop, in 1986 Bishop Robinson divorced his wife and made public his sexual orientation. His election as Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003 precipitated the crack up of the Anglican Communion, leading to a majority of the Church’s provinces to break or qualify their relationship with the Episcopal Church.
The bishop noted that there was “at least a small comfort to me, as a gay rights and marriage equality advocate, to know that like any marriage, gay and lesbian couples are subject to the same complications and hardships that afflict marriages between heterosexual couples. All of us sincerely intend, when we take our wedding vows, to live up to the ideal of ‘’til death do us part. But not all of us are able to see this through until death indeed parts us.”