Archbishop Sentamu and difference.

Archbishop Sentamu: gay relationships are less "different" than you think.

On the Andrew Marr Show today, Archbishop John Sentamu was asked about the Anglican Church's opposition to equal marriage. His justification for the well-recorded opposition he has expressed was that it was important to acknowledge "difference", implying that the word "marriage" should not be applied to what has historically been an exclusively heterosexual institution. So equal marriage would be rejected because it is a campaign for "sameness" rather than for equality.

The point that the Archbishop does not grasp is that gay and lesbian people, in campaigning for equal marriage, do not want to be "the same" as "heterosexual":  we want to be "the same" as "married". Similarly, women priests do not want to be "the same" as "men": they want to be "the same" as "ordained". The point is that women should never have been excluded from being priests, in the same way that they should never have been excluded from voting. Correcting the injustice of historical exclusion puts right a historical wrong.

If the Archbishop thinks LGBT unions should be called by a different term, does he think that Anglican women priests should be called something different? Priestesses, maybe?

Black people who were forced to sit at the back of the bus did not want to be ‘the same’ as white people: they wanted to be ‘the same’ in terms of their dignity and recognition of their human rights. Black people did not accept that they had to put up with being forced to sit at the back of the bus when the reactionaries said they had to because that was the way it had always been, or because they were still able to make their journey regardless. By the same token, gay and lesbian people should not have to sit at the back of the bus with ‘civil partnerships’ because our relationships do not qualify for what is perceived by opponents as the higher status of ‘marriage’, exclusive to heterosexuals.

Although I have much respect for some of Archbishop Sentamu's views - particularly his stance on Mugabe - his position on equal marriage is discriminatory. Which is hardly surprising, as the form of Christianity he embraces is intrinsically homophobic. Disguising this discrimination with subterfuge about respecting "difference" just underlines the fact that he doesn't get how the potential of LGBT relationships is intrinsically no different from the potential of heterosexual relationships, except in the minds of those who do not approve of them.

© Gary Powell, 2013