We took a little heat for having the unmitigated gall and poor taste to question - albeit in a lightly speculative manner - if the “next frontier” for the Episcopal Church perhaps involves… errr… “extra-species romance.”
But as anyone familiar with Johnson’ Law knows, the surest way to turn perversion into doctrine in the Episcopal Church is to make a joke about it.
And so, here we are.
Ralinda Gregor at the American Anglican Council has done us all a tremendous service by doing the research for, an putting together, an article titled Money, Sex, Indaba: Corrupting the Anglican Communion Listening Process. This is must-reading for all of us, so hie thee hence after familiarizing yourself with the basics. Then, return for some discussion about what you can actually do about it besides shaking your head and gnashing your teeth.
To begin with, the Anglican Communion Office has in this crisis over homosexuality been cynically attempting to appease the overwhelmingly conservative African provinces, where 2/3 of the world’s Anglicans reside, by concocting a never-ending conversation about sexuality and theology designed to “keep everyone at the table” for as long as possible. This is the organic evolution of the “listening process” mentioned in the 1998 Lambeth Resolution 1.10 (which, incidentally, categorically rejected homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture).
To make matters worse, the ACO has decided to label this newest incarnation of the listening process “Indaba,” an African word for a process by which decisions are arrived at by a more-or-less egalitarian process the basis of which is group discussion.
The problem continues with the fact that this “Indaba” process requires money, and wouldn’t-ya-know-it, cash is in short supply around the Anglican Communion Office.
Enter the Satcher Institute, a “progressive” organization that receives a large amount of its funding from the odious Ford Foundation. One of the Satcher Institute’s departments is called the Center for Excellence in Sexual Health (CESH), and they have volunteered to secure funding for the Anglican Communion Office’s “Indaba” project to the tune of $1.5 million. This funding was approved at last month’s meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in Jamaica.
The money comes from a wealthy Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Southeast Florida named Marta Weeks, who has long supported “progressive” causes.
Seeing any red flags yet? Good, because here’s where you really need to start paying attention:
The assistant director of CESH, Dr. William Stayton respectively, is an off-the-chart advocate for normalizing all manner of sexual perversion. From the AAC report:
An assistant director and expert in the field of human sexuality for the CESH has expressed and promoted a view of sexual freedom that knows virtually no limits.
The expert, Dr. William Stayton, an ordained American Baptist minister, served as a witness for those seeking to strike down laws against pornography on the internet. As an expert witness for the American Civil Liberties Union in ACLU v. Reno, Stayton testified in 1996 that he did not believe viewing sexually explicit videos of sexual intercourse and oral sex were harmful to children and admitted that his five year old had seen one of these videos Stayton used in his sex therapy practice.
Stayton addressed bestiality in the 2006 edition of “Human Sexuality: An Encyclopedia.” In his entry on eroticism, he noted that it is not unusual for some people to have erotic feelings towards animals:“While most people do not act on these sexual feelings, some do. Generally, it occurs out of experimentation or when no human partner is available, rather than because a person is eroticized only by animals. Most researchers agree that this type of sexual experimentation is not harmful, unless the person is discovered. Then, it is the reaction of the person who discovers the sexual event that can do the most harm psychologically and emotionally, rather than the experience itself.”
Regarding sexual acts with children, in his entry on “Pederasty in Ancient and Early Christian History” in the 2006 “Human Sexuality: An Encyclopedia,” Stayton claims that:
“There is a story in the gospels of Matthew (8:5-13) and Luke (7:1-10) that most certainly illustrates pederasty as not having a negative value in Jesus’s thought… Since pederastic relationships were so common and accepted in the ancient world of Jesus, it is likely that, as the story indicates, Jesus himself had no problem with the practice of pederasty.”
His conclusion is devoid of Christian morality as well:
“There seems to be nothing inherently harmful or damaging in sexual acts alone, but rather harmfulness and damage must be interpreted within the context of the way each particular behavior is seen in each culture and in terms of its long-range effects on the individual.”
This reckless and unsubstantiated conclusion is far outside the mainstream of Anglican interpretation of Scripture. In fact, it is outside the mainstream of any responsible biblical scholarship. And yet this sex therapist and minister is the assistant director and sole clergy representative of the very organization that will be involved in funding conversations on theology and sexuality throughout the Anglican Communion.Stayton is also a member of Loving More, an education and advocacy organization for polyamory (mulitiple sex partners), and is listed on their website as a “poly friendly professional” offering relational and sex therapy in Pennsylvania.
Dr. Stayton is listed here as a “poly-friendly professional,” and here as a panelist on a forum titled “The Religious Right’s Obsession with Gay Sex?” at Princeton, which was described as - I kid you not - a “panel discussion on tactics used by many right-wing organizations, and why these groups focus energies on portraying LGBT individuals as obsessed with sex.” Here is a video presentation (35Mb Windows Media file) by Dr. Stayton titled “What Sexuality Educators Should Know About Religion” given at the “First International Congress on Lifespan Sexuality Education.” BE WARNED: About halfway through the presentation, Dr. Stayton shows some scenes from one of his “therapeutic” videos. The scenes he chooses to show amount to little more than soft-core pornography, and evidently they’re just a prelude to, in his words, the “kinky” ones. Aside from the lame attempt to dress up pornography as serious, scientifically-supported “therapy” (I mean really… who would’ve guessed that caressing each other and “exploring each others’ genitals” would lead to arousal?), Stayton also posits a “sexual values” system which, if you’re a student of rhetorical logic, leads to many unintentional laughs.
So go and read the entire AAC report, and return ready for a little contemplation.
[taps fingers on desk, hums melodiously…]
Now then.
I’m going to suggest we forgo the fun we usually have whenever we find a connection between the Episcopal left and abject perversion (which invariably takes the form of “progressives” on this site and others showing up to insist that the connection is mere coincidence - that about this implication that the progressive agenda on sexual morality involves anything more than conferring blessings on loving, committed, long-term same-sex couples, why gosh, nothing could be further from the truth) and just cut right to the chase:
What are the odds that RJ Reynolds would ever seriously fund a program designed to reduce the actual consumption of cigarettes? What are the odds that Anheuser-Busch would ever seriously fund a program to reduce the actual consumption of beer? What are the odds that Trojan would ever seriously fund a program to reduce sexual intercourse?
The answer is: Zero, in all cases.
So what, pray tell, is the Satcher Institute’s CESH doing “monitoring” the Anglican Communion’s flagship effort at “dialogue” about sexuality? Indeed, why are they even interested in the Anglicans at all?
The Anglican “Indaba” process has from its inception been a fraud, a delay tactic concocted by Rowan Williams and the heavily-revisionist ACO, in order to keep the orthodox Global South from bolting the communion. Now it has morphed into something that is being “monitored” by an organization led by people who advocate not just for same-sex unions - which we’ve come to expect - and not just for polyamorous unions as well, but by people who assert that there’s no harm in showing 5-year-olds videotaped depictions of intercourse, who seek to de-stigmatize bestiality, and who assert ‘it is likely that… Jesus himself had no problem with the practice of pederasty.’
Let us dwell briefly on Dr. Stayton’s conclusion regarding the story told in Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10:
“[it] most certainly illustrates pederasty as not having a negative value in Jesus’s thought… Since pederastic relationships were so common and accepted in the ancient world of Jesus, it is likely that, as the story indicates, Jesus himself had no problem with the practice of pederasty.”
I just wanted to make sure we all understand exactly who we’re dealing with here: The sole clergy representative of the organization that will be “monitoring” the Anglican indaba process over homosexuality, to make sure their money is being spent “as intended,” who is also an ordained minister (granted, of the fringe-liberal American Baptist denomination), goes beyond the garden-variety “Jesus said nothing about homosexuality.” He goes beyond “Jesus approved of homosexuality.” He goes beyond even “Jesus Himself was gay.” All of this we’ve come to expect from proponents of the “new thing” in the Anglican church.
No, what Dr. Stayton is saying is that Jesus would have no problem with grown men having sex with boys.
My first thought was that, surely, The Rev. Weeks had no idea who Dr. Stayton is or what he espouses, but that doesn’t seem to be the case:
Weeks told the American Anglican Council that she was approached and asked to fund the project by the Satcher Institute, not by the ACO or its staff. Weeks said her association with staff members of the Satcher Institute’s Center of Excellence for Sexual Health (CESH) goes back to their leadership of another organization she supported, the Center for Sexuality and Religion (CSR), which merged with Satcher’s CESH in 2008.
And who was the director of the CSR when it merged with the Center for Excellenace in Sexual Health at the Satcher Institute? None other than… William Stayton.
Several people have a lot of questions they need to answer:
- The Rev. Weeks as to whether, as it appears, she knew of Dr. Stayton’s well-established views on homosexuality, polyamory, pedophilia, and bestiality.
- The Rev. Canon Philip Groves of the ACO and the Rev. Canon Flora Winfield of Lambeth Palace, on whether or not they knew of Dr. Stayton’s work and views, and if not, whether they intend to continue the indaba process with the funding secured by and overssen by Satcher’s CESH department, now that they know of his work and views.
- Ultimately, the responsibility of what to do about this falls on Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. He has the most questions to answer of anyone. He has staked the future of the communion on “keeping everyone at the table” through this Continuing Indaba process. And as it stands now, he has as an overseer of the organization that secured funding for it, an ordained minister who believes that Jesus approved of grown men having sex with boys.
Is there something we can do about this, other than sit back and talk about what a shame it is?
I’m thinking the answer is “yes.”
So if you’re interested in what that might be, read Ralinda Gregor’s entire report. Hold your fire until you’ve had a chance to sleep on it. Then watch this space over the next few days.
117 Comments •
(I never used a smiley before. Definitely odd.)
Easy one - get this in front of B16. The only thing that will be hard is finding a handbell choir to take shifts and a candle the size of a sequoia so he can apply bell, book, and candle to all the nutters in the Anglican North.