Former Archbishop of Canterbury Attacks Gay Marriage 'Power Grab'
Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey is speaking out strongly against marriage equality in the UK, in an article attacking PM David Cameron for his support of same-sex marriage, the Telegraph reports:
Lord Carey wrote that he was ''baffled'' by David Cameron's statement at last year's Conservative party conference, in which the Prime Minister said: ''I don't support gay marriage in spite of being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I am a Conservative.''
In his article, Lord Carey said: ''Like many others, I was baffled by this statement. Not because I begrudge rights and benefits to homosexual couples.''
He said he was baffled ''because this Government's proposal constitutes one of the greatest political power grabs in history.''
He went on: ''The state does not 'own' the institution of marriage. Nor does the church.
''The honourable estate of matrimony precedes both the state and the church, and neither of these institutions have the right to redefine it in such a fundamental way.''
Carey is also throwing his weight behind an ugly new petition campaign called Coalition for Marriage which you can check out HERE.
Martin Robbins shreds the campaign in The Guardian.
Said activist Peter Tatchell in response to the campaign: "The Coalition for Marriage is intolerant and out of touch. Its support for the ban on gay marriage is homophobic and discrimination. Coalition members are entitled to believe that same-sex marriages are wrong, but they are not entitled to demand that their opposition to such marriages should be imposed on the rest of society and enforced by law."
I wouldn't mind betting NOM and Stand up For Marriage have their fingers in this one. Either way, Carey et are going nowhere. They can protest all they want, the British public is supporting marriage equality and more politicians are getting on board.
Posted by: Robert in NYC | Feb 20, 2012 10:36:21 AM
The sooner the Church is separated from government and law in Britain the better. I admire faith, but deplore the dictates of organised religion. If only it understood its true role, which is to be inclusive and loving.
Posted by: robert | Feb 20, 2012 11:12:21 AM
When churches had a monopoly on power they didn't mind power grabs (and grabbing children's crotches, but I digress).
The God Squad just doesn't want any competition.
Posted by: Anastasia Beaverhausen | Feb 20, 2012 11:36:11 AM
How ridiculous is this? One may grant that the state does not "own" the institution of marriage, but it certainly owns the certification process of marriages that it has set up. And it is for the government to decide whom get certified as such. In the same way, churches "own" the right to solemnize whichever marriages it feels is right. If a church wanted to marry a brother and sister, it could. That "union would have no legal rights, but the church could hold its ceremony.
But to whom does marriage belong? If it belongs to the people, then it is government that represents the people, not the church, for it is in government that the people have a voice. The peopel have no control over what the churches say. That much is obvious.
Posted by: MattS | Feb 20, 2012 11:48:51 AM
It seems to me that there is a new cooperative and coordinated push by a united
gaggle of religious groups and churches to push back strongly against the rights and equalities which we have established in the last twenty years.
And these groups are pushing their anti-gay agenda through organizations like NOM and others.
It wouldn't surprise me to hear that Opus Dei are up to their old dirty tricks again.
but I think that we have to be even more vocal, more insistent, and much more political in our demands for equality......and it is the young generation on which our hopes are best secured.
BTW, what's the collective noun for a plural of churches/religious groups ?
I was thinking of a "damnation" of churches/churchmen !
Posted by: JackFknTwist | Feb 20, 2012 12:09:11 PM
A clarification: This is the FORMER Archbishop of Canterbury, of the Church of England, not the Catholic Church, thus Opus Dei would have nothing to do with this, and neither would he have anything to do with them.
Secondly, he was a Thatcherite and, if I'm not mistaken, Lady Thatcher had something to do with his appointment, at a time when not only most of the priests but also the bishops of the CofE were staunch leftists, much to her alarm and discomfort.
Finally, much to my relief the new, young Bishop of Salisbury just came forward in total support of marriage equality. His is a major Bishopric, of ancient prestige and importance within the Church of England and Anglicanism in general. As the current crop of bishops die off, only those in support of marriage equality will have a posthumous future because +Salisbury and people like him will be taking their place. The failures that are the current ++Canterbury and ++York will be remembered as such, and history will not look kindly on this Canterbury Clown either.
Posted by: Clint | Feb 20, 2012 12:36:54 PM
@ CLINT:
Yup, I know he is C of E. Thanks.
The point I was making is that there is a coordinated cross border ( so to speak)or across denomination effort being made among the churches to attack our rights.
And where there is such a "behind the scene" push Opus Dei is invariably behind it.
Remember it is a lay organisation which has vowed to infiltrate the upper echelons of the establishment. And over the years that is exactly what it has done.
Posted by: JackFknTwist | Feb 20, 2012 12:52:55 PM
Robert, even if the Church were disestablished, it still would not stop them. Look what happens in America where we have separation of both. More religious extremism interfering in marriage equality debates and calling for mob rule in the form of referenda. More importantly, I'd like to see the abolition of the House of Lords once and for all which would diminish the role of the state cult drastically. It knows it's losing the cultural war in the UK hence the desperate rants from Carey. The majority of the British public support marriage equality too. It will pass amidst all of the rantings from the religious loonies because some of the denominations actually support us and our right to marry. This is a storm in a teacup and going nowhere fast.
Posted by: Robert in NYC | Feb 20, 2012 12:55:00 PM
these people believe that Anne Frank and Gandhi are sharing a space together in Hell.
why do we give a f**k what they think? they're idiots.
Posted by: Little Kiwi | Feb 20, 2012 1:12:29 PM
Ironically though, despite the presence of a handful of bishops in the second chamber in the UK, religion plays a far smaller role in politics and governmental policy than it does in the US, where Republicans particularly and some Democrats too either use it to rally their devout electorate or to retain their seats. There was an interesting article somewhere recently about the difficulty of being a declared atheist here in the US - it can be a social, career and political disaster to express such an opinion. Of all the major possible standpoints on religion and spirituality, an atheist presidential candidate polled as the least likely to be elected. In the UK most people seem to view overtly religious MPs and politicians with a degree of suspicion.
Posted by: mynci_bone | Feb 20, 2012 1:34:36 PM
''The honourable estate of matrimony precedes both the state and the church, and neither of these institutions have the right to redefine it in such a fundamental way.''
That's rich, coming from a man whose church was founded by Henry VIII for the express purpose of redefining marriage to revocable instead of eternal.
Posted by: JJ | Feb 20, 2012 1:47:39 PM
Well, no one took much notice of him when he was Archbishop of Canterbury - and even fewer will this time as he howls away at the modern world as a "born again" evangelical crazy.
I wouldn't worry too much about him - this is Christianity in Britain we are talking about. Nothing important to the vast majority of Britons.
Howl away, your Grace.
Posted by: coemgenus | Feb 20, 2012 1:47:43 PM
In re: ''The state does not 'own' the institution of marriage. Nor does the church. The honourable estate of matrimony precedes both the state and the church, and neither of these institutes have the right to redefine it in such a fundamental way.''
Everything we do has preceded both the state and the church. We defined what we do before we became the state or the church; we defined and redefined everything we do after we became the state or the church (or other social institutions). We "married" before we called it marriage; we formed families before we made marriage the "institution of matrimony," or granted marriage property rights and made it an estate sufficient unto itself, to be owned by no one.
This argument does not stand. More and more we, as a society, are coming to recognize this. To the extent that marriage is a social contract - and it is - that contract can be defined however society chooses.
At issue, at the root of it all, is how we, a society, do that.
Posted by: HBT | Feb 20, 2012 2:16:08 PM
What HBT said.
I propose a compromise. Let the Christians win the argument that matrimony precedes the state and religion and can find its origins in the Garden of Eden.
Then point out to them that THEY believe that was 6,000 years ago, so they've got those 6,000 years. We, on the other hand, have the previous 4,500,000 years while man was evolving, forming families, and loving each other.
Posted by: BobN | Feb 20, 2012 5:03:20 PM