Same-sex Marriage? In Scotland it’s now a matter of conscience
ON JUNE 8th 2017, the General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church voted in favour of changing its canon on marriage. This change allowed the marriages of same-sex couples to begin to take place within those Scottish Episcopal congregations that wanted to host them and be conducted by those clergy who wanted to celebrate them. The vote itself was the culmination of a long process of discussion and discernment. In addition to providing for marriages to be celebrated between same-sex couples, it also meant that clergy in all three orders of ministry were from that time allowed to enter such marriages - something that might have led to their dismissal before the vote. This brief article is intended to pick up on several of the issues which led to the vote. It is not written by a neutral observer, its author being one of those who had campaigned for years for the vote to take place in order to further the full inclusion of lesbian and gay people in the church. During the course of that campaigning, a number of things became clear. First, that old assumptions about liberal and evangelical groupings could not be relied on. Second, that those who most effectively delayed the vote were often those who claimed to be supportive of LGBT people. Finally, the great breakthrough that led to change took place when the church started to focus on conscience rather than looking for uniformity of belief about the biblical evidence. Challenging Stereotypes I used to think I knew what people thought. Having come through nearly fteen years of campaigning for LGBT inclusion, I have to admit that I don’t. For many years, same-sex marriage could have been characterised as a proxy war between two opposing tribes. On the one hand you had the Evangelicals and on the other the Liberals. The Evangelicals themselves came in two divisions – Conservative Evangelicals who were against the marriage of same-sex couples and said so and Open Evangelicals who were against the marriage of same- sex couples and didn’t like to admit it. Liberals generally said that they were in favour of lesbian and gay inclusion in the church but (I found many times) could not always be relied upon to vote accordingly.
* Full article available in printed copies.
Kevin Holdsworth
is Provost of St Mary’s Cathedral, Glasgow.