Steve Offers Another Perspective on Anglicans and Gays

Gotta comment on this one. And I know I'll be flamed. But there's a lot of misunderstanding, and people are misinformed. I attended the church at the center of this controversy, and followed carefully the battles that were fought.

I have gay friends, I like them, I work with them, I sit next to them, I have nothing against them, and the vast majority of people in these churches feel the same. Including the clergy. In fact, intolerance is heartily discouraged.

The Anglicans in question are not against sitting in the pew next to a gay couple (and often do). They are against being forced to perform gay marriages. Which is what was really happening here.

But that's not all there is to this issue. There are also other issues of faith where the local archbishop insisted that he was right and the Bible was wrong, and was actually locking congregations out of their churches until they caved in to his demands.

The local archbishop also was going against historic Anglican doctrine, as well as the majority of Anglicans in the world to push through his own personal brand of new theology.

This issue was about the core of our faith - the truth of the Bible, and went a long way beyond gay marriages, and was never about homophobia or a dislike for gay people.

It WAS (at least partly) about the definition and sanctity of marriage, however.

But to say that Anglicans cannot tolerate gay couples is completely misrepresenting the facts. It was never about that.

It was about a single archbishop trying to bully an entire diocese into changing their belief in the Bible. Unfortunately, he knew how to play the media, and the churches in question were naive in that respect.