Dr Alan Wilson, the Bishop of Buckingham, has written this Letter to a Saloon Bar Moralist.
Thank you for your letter. The more people apply their first principles to this question, the closer we will come to a way forward so thank you for trying. I am sure many people, especially those of a certain age will share it instinctively, driven by a primal feeling of disgust about gay sex.
What I am finding also, however, is that your views appear anything but natural to vast numbers of people who simply see gay people as people, not defined by their sexual practices. The opposite answer is as clear to them, as yours is to you and the minority of my correspondents your letter represents…
Praise to the Lord for favoring us with Bishop Alan!
In other news, George Carey is showing the intellectual incision and moral courage that so distinguished his time in Canterbury.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22727808
“In other news, George Carey is showing the intellectual incision and moral courage that so distinguished his time in Canterbury.” (“Gay marriage plan ‘paves way for polygamy’, says Lord Carey”)
So of the 15 countries and 15 U.S. jurisdictions that have enacted same-sex marriage, how many of them have subsequently enacted polygamous marriages? None, you say? I guess the slippery slope is not so slippery after all.
But what about your Bishop of Salisbury and the new article by Andrew Goddard? http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/page.cfm?ID=819 If a successful argument, all it does is box the Church of England into a corner less connected with society. http://pluralistspeaks.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/another-nail-in-anglican-coffin.html
I hear you, Pluralist. Sometimes I think disestablishment would be absolutely the best thing that could happen for CoE. But it really seems quite complicated, the layers of practice that has developed through the centuries…
Polygamy is of course practised in much of the Bible (when people trumpet the Bible as being their authority for being against same sex marriage) and polygamy is invariably an opposite sex phenomenon so it isn’t even clear how one could lead to the other.
I think the greatest risk of polygamy returning is using the Bible as a basis for social policy. If you use the Bible as the basis of your moral reasoning it is only a matter of time before people will take it too far and ask for polygamy to be reintroduced.
Craig, I can see how one can lead to the other. The thinking is “the only acceptable sex is straight monogamous sex. Gay people are deliberately straying from that norm. If we give them what they want, then the next thing will be that straight men no longer see why they should be restricted to one woman, when that is so against their nature, and so there will be pressure to relax the rules for other groups too. And so we will all become polygamists and then the next group will insist that their desires for marrying their sheep must… Read more »