(Click on the logo to return to the main blog.)

What the Anglican Church Has Wrought
08/06/2003

John Derbyshire is not happy about the newly ordained openly gay bishop in the New Hampshire branch of his Church:

Millions of ordinary Americans struggle through worse crises every day, and come down at last on the side of social responsibility and Christian duty. Robinson came down on the side of Woody Allen: "The heart wants what it wants." Feu!) That he could become a bishop in my church sickens and disgusts me. We can show tolerance and Christian obligation towards deviant minorities without handing them the keys to the house, can't we? Apparently not, not today, not in America. For shame! For shame!

As if to give Andrew Sullivan more material to work with, Derb added more later:

We have let something loose in our society, and it won't rest until it has occupied the commanding heights and forcibly shut the mouths of all who object--bigots! homophobes! haters! I have never liked homosexuality, nor tried to hide that fact; but all my life I have supported tolerance towards homosexuals as a harmless minority who are just as entitled to pursue their private inclinations as the rest of us. I have always thought that the criminalization of homosexual acts was both foolish, and inhumane, and un-Christian. I am no longer so sure. Perhaps our grandfathers were wiser than us. Perhaps there are some things that we, the normal majority, SHOULD, deliberately and consciously, disapprove and marginalize.

In the second post, Derb contemplates leaving the Anglican Church but discounts moving into the Roman Catholic Church because it "is headed the same way." I wonder. For one thing, the Catholic Church forbids marriage and sex among its priests, so it is even less constitutionally disposed to practicing homosexual parents' acting as priests. For another, the Vatican just reaffirmed the sinfulness of homosexuality in the context of advocating against public recognition of homosexual relationships. In fact, Andrew Sullivan recently had his own Leaving My Church moment in response. Wouldn't it pull the Catholic Church away from the brink if the Sullivans were to leave and the Derbyshires were to come?

Think about it, Derb. Lane Core has even been nice enough to put together a reading list for Anglicans in such a position.

(By the way, be sure to read a moving email that Derb posted in the Corner from a woman whose husband abandoned her and their three children for another man.)

Posted by Justin Katz @ 03:31 PM EST

1 Comment

Thanks for the notice.

ELC @ 08/06/2003 04:24 PM EST