Forbidden…
Two Anglican priests in Britain may be in a heap of trouble after getting married – to each other! Though the men – Peter Cowell and David Lord – had already registered their civil partnership, but may have gone the extra step by marrying last month. And Church of England officials are none-too-happy. Said a spokesperson, “What we seem to have here is a fairly serious breach of the rules by an individual or groups of individuals.” [AFP]
Good for the gay priests…they probably said ‘fuck it’…threw caution to the wind and tied the knot. Why the hell not? Some rules were meant to be broken, like those that are thousands of years old and about as outdated.
Congratulations, guys!
We all know, and the church leaders surely know, that a very high percentage of priests are gay. Most churches have written policies against gay priests, but they don’t enforce them — if they were to defrock all of the gay priests, there wouldn’t be anyone left to say mass. It’s the same reason they don’t enforce the written policy against gay choir directors and musicians — if they did, they wouldn’t have any music on Sunday.
The hateful policies need to be changed. The only way that will happen is if it becomes an issue. If, for example, a great number of the gay priests were to “come out”, it would create such an issue.
Churches are big businesses. They function on money. They need employees (priests), and product (weekly masses), to generate their income. They cannot defrock half of the priests. It would bankrupt the whole church. So the other choice is to find some sort of accommodation. For a couple hundred years, that accommodation has been essentially, “Don’t ask. Don’t tell.” That doesn’t work any more. It is cruel to the priests, and it is shameful to the institution.
They will find a new accommodation. I expect it will have something to do with allowing gay people to be priests, again, just like it was for the first thousand years.
There is new evidence that Jesus was gay. DNA from two separate men discovered on the Shroud of Turin.