Connecting the Dots

The letter posted below from Oasis California to Bishop Swing should put to rest, once and for all, any doubt that Gene Robinson and C051 are a beginning, not an end, to the full normalization and subsequent blessing of homosexual behavior in the Episcopal Church.

I have lost track of the number of people I have talked to who have said, in reference to C051, that "this is where it stops," that we're not going to be blessing full-bore gay marriage, because "that's simply not what marriage is."

It should be clear from this letter that activist homosexuals in this church, as long as they have any grounds at all on which to portray themselves as "second-class Christians," will never be happy with the half-measures encouraged by C051. The next goal is the sacramental blessing of Holy Matrimony for homosexuals. Until then, the "second-class Christian" argument is an elementary one to make.

Will full-on Holy Matrimony, then, be the end of their "struggle"? Not at all.

You can't on the one hand ordain non-celibate gay clergy and give the blessings of Holy Matrimony to gay couples, while on the other hand teach people in this church that homosexuality is anything less than a normal, healthy lifestyle, of equal value in God's eyes to the union of one man and one woman.

Therefore, wherever in the church you address the issue of sexuality - Sunday school, marriage counseling, youth groups - you will be discriminating against homosexuals if you imply in any way that theirs is a lifestyle better avoided. (To say nothing of whether it's sinful).

And of course, you can't just let it go unmentioned, either. Promoting heterosexuality while not promoting homosexuality - in the new reality of the Episcopal Church - amounts to discrimination, and they will not tolerate it.

These are the dots that have been connected by the scores of young families that are leaving the Episcopal Church. They are the dots that will soon be connected by many of those who haven't already left. For some, Robinson's ordination was enough. For others, the ordination and C051 together were enough.

But for many young families who have not yet left, what will finally be enough will be to see, inserted into their weekly bulletins, the banns of marriage for two men or two women: To know that on the altar where they take their children to receive the sacrament of communion, the blessings of Holy Matrimony will be given to homosexual couples. How many parents are going to be at church the next week, if this week their ten-year-old asks them how it is that this man is marrying that man?

I have heard moderates and even some conservatives of older generations furrow their brows when they hear of young families leaving the church. They scoff at their impatience and wonder why they can't just give this crisis some time to work itself out. The answer is that parents with 3-year-olds, 6-year-olds, 10-year-olds... they don't have 15 years to wait around while this little drama plays out. Their kids are growing up now, and the Episcopal Church now isn't giving them the spiritual clarity their parents know they need.

Every Sunday that ticks by with these issues unresolved sees more and more young families connecting these dots, and what they're finding is that the dots lead out the front door and down the street to other churches.

Posted by Greg Griffith at May 16, 2004 12:04 PM (GMT -6:00)