The Church of England would make me laugh…

… if they didn’t make me so damn angry.

Here is a list of issues I take with the CofE’s opinion on the theory that civil partnerships can be given marriage status as soon as 2015.

1. They say that it will undermine their status and the nature of marriage. I wonder if they’ve forgotten that in Tudor times, divorce was frowned upon by the Catholic church just as much as homosexuality is frowned upon by the CofE today. The Church of England was formed by Henry VIII so that he could, essentially, undermine the standards of marriage of the day. I think it’s fairly hypocritical for the Church of England to condemn a change to marriage given their past.
2. They say that marriage should be between a man and a woman because men and women can procreate. Modern advances in medicine – the use of surrogacy and IVF – make it possible for same-sex couples to procreate too, and last time I checked, people were complaining because there’s too many babies in the world, and too many of them are unwanted. There are a massive number of children waiting to be adopted, and I think that by allowing same-sex couples to marry, and encouraging them to adopt, we would be seeing not a loss of the traditional family dynamic, but a change to it. After all, the parents are married and they are giving a home to a child who sorely needs it – what’s the problem with that?
3. Since when did the Church of England, and Christianity in general, have the monopoly on marriage? Muslims get married. Atheists get married. Pagans, humanists, agnostics, Scientologists, Mormons – they all get married. Marriage is an ancient tradition which dates back, if not in name then in the ceremony, way before Christianity was founded.
4. The church seems to essentially be getting all hissy because people want to do something that they don’t agree with – even though it doesn’t personally affect the church or any of their members or officials, because it’s not something they like, they don’t want anyone to be allowed to do it. To quote someone on The Student Room, it’s like a Hindu demanding that no-one eats beef because it undermines the sanctity of a cow. Whilst the cow being eaten doesn’t directly affect Hindus, other than to make them feel sad, they don’t want other people to do it (I’m not saying this is a Hindu viewpoint, just pointing out what this ridiculous statement by the church is equivalent to).
5. If marriage is all about procreation, does that mean that people who are post-menopausal shouldn’t be allowed to marry? Or infertile couples? Or couples who don’t intend on having children? If a married couple miscarry, should they be forced to divorce because they are no longer procreating? Marriage isn’t all about having children, just as life isn’t all about having children. Yes, thousands of years ago, that was the main aim in life, to ensure the survival of the species, but these days, people have other goals in life. Some families have ten children, meaning other people can afford not to have children if they choose not to. Life’s main aim needn’t be to become baby machines any more because it isn’t strictly necessary.
6. The church has gay clergy, for crying out loud, so why are they so opposed to gay marriage? Also, the amounts of reported paedophilia and child molestation in the church is far more of an abomination than homosexuality.
7. Homosexuality being sinful was mentioned in the Old Testament – but hang on, in the New Testament, didn’t Jesus come and die for our sins, and wash those sins away? The New Testament reiterates some of the more important rules – not to kill, not to steal etc – but as far as I’m aware (this is second-hand knowledge as I have never read the Bible), the New Testament mentions nothing about homosexuality being a sin – so why is it still considered sinful? In the Old Testament, the things considered sinful – including homosexuality – reflected the culture at the time; things such as the mixing of fabrics, over-eating and women showing their faces. The world has changed and the Church should accept this and move with it.
8. The church has warned that this is leading to the separation of church and state. About time too! They don’t seem to realize that, just as easily as the Catholic church was in the Tudor times, their standing can be replaced by the introduction of another church which doesn’t take such a bigoted stance. The church should never have influence on matters of the state because, like it or not, we are a multicultural – and therefore, multi-theistic – country, so to have just one church linked to the state misrepresents the country as a whole.

 

In short, I think the church need to re-evaluate their faith. Surely, if they were Christians, they would listen to the teachings of their own book – to love one another, and to do unto others as they would be done by. Love is love, regardless of who it is between – man and woman, woman and woman, man and man, and people who don’t identify as any gender with other people who don’t identify as any gender, and any combination of the aforementioned. We all love – I’m sure I love my boyfriend in the same way that my friend loves his boyfriend, in the same way that I’m sure Celia Kitzinger loves Sue Wilkinson (look at Wiki if you don’t know who). If we all love our partners in the same way, why is it that I will be allowed to marry my boyfriend, but if the laws don’t change, my friend won’t be allowed to marry his, and Kitzinger and Wilkinson had to go to British Columbia to get married?