Akinola versus Lee
The local connection to this is that 15 or so Episcopal churches in Virginia have chosen to follow the Nigerian Primate, Peter Akinola, rather than Bishop Lee. Bishop Lee is no huge liberal, as one can see from this Washington Post story on him. For example, he will not ordain non-celibate gay priests or authorize the blessing of gay unions. http://www.washingto... On the other hand he voted for the ordination of the gay Episcopal bishop, an act which got him to receive death threats.
We're still awaiting word on Akinola's response to the legislation, though in the past he has not only supported similar legislation, but defended Nigeria's right to pass such legislation free of western interference. I thought this lede from a New York Times piece captured something worth knowing about him:
ABUJA, Nigeria, Dec. 20 - The way he tells the story, the first and only time Archbishop Peter J. Akinola knowingly shook a gay person's hand, he sprang backward the moment he realized what he had done.
Archbishop Peter J. Akinola, right, internationally known for his harsh stance against In the mean time,homosexuality, with bishops in Abuja, Nigeria, in 2005.
Archbishop Akinola, the conservative leader of Nigeria's Anglican Church who has emerged at the center of a schism over homosexuality in the global Anglican Communion, re-enacted the scene from behind his desk Tuesday, shaking his head in wonder and horror.
"This man came up to me after a service, in New York I think, and said, `Oh, good to see you bishop, this is my partner of many years,' " he recalled. "I said, `Oh!' I jumped back."
Who Gets the Property
The issue of who gets the church property is of interest to some. The diocese has refused to drop its lawsuit against the breakaway churches, which has requested the diocese simply to walk away from the property. Last week a number of the breakaway churches had to file replies to the court complaint.
According to a story on NPR, it does not look good for the breakaway churches.http://marketplace.p...
The Episcopal Church is fighting at least half a dozen similar lawsuits across the country. It's already won cases in New York, North Carolina, Missouri and Pennsylvania. ***The courts must decide whether church law or civil property law wins out. Church law expert Martin Nussbaum believes the Supreme Court has already set a precedent in this area. He predicts the breakaway congregations will lose.
MARTIN NUSSBAUM: They get no money. They get no property. But they do get their integrity and they get to proceed and worship as they believe they are called to do.
I don't know if Nussbaum has a dog in this fight, but he is a well known church law lawyer. He has represented, at one time or another: Catholic archdioceses and dioceses of Boston, Cheyenne, Colorado Springs, Denver, El Paso, Fargo, Jackson, Portland, Los Angeles, and Richmond; National Association of Evangelicals; the Association of Christian Schools International; the Evangelical Christian Credit Union; Episcopal dioceses of Colorado, Massachusetts, West Texas, and Wyoming; Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod; General Conference of the Church of God (Seventh Day), the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; New Life Church; Sisters of St. Francis of Colorado Springs; Colorado Christian University, First United Methodist Church of Colorado Springs; Colorado Springs Christian School; and Catholic Charities of Colorado Springs and Denver. He has prepared amicus briefs for most major denominations, parachurch organizations, Jewish and Muslim societies.
International Pressure
Akinola finds himself pitted against Nobel Prize Winner Desmond TuTu, also the former Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town.
KENYA: Tutu likens gays' treatment to apartheid, stirs African debate***
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Desmond Tutu, the former Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, has warned African churches against paying too much attention to the issue of homosexuality while ignoring real problems facing the continent."I am deeply, deeply distressed that in the face of the most horrendous problems -- we've got poverty, we've got conflict and war, we've got HIV/AIDS -- and what do we concentrate on? We concentrate on what you are doing in bed," Tutu told journalists in Nairobi during the World Social Forum.
***Tutu likened discrimination against homosexuals to that faced by black people under South Africa's racist apartheid policies.
"To penalise someone because of their sexual orientation is like what used to happen to us; to be penalised for something which we could do nothing [about] -- our ethnicity, our race," said Tutu. "I would find it quite unacceptable to condemn, persecute a minority that has already been persecuted."
In an earlier statement, he said anti-gay actions being taken by Anglicans made him ashamed to be an Episcopalian.
You can read the statement of Human Rights Watch here:
http://hrw.org/engli...
Amnesty International has joined the HRC position, along with a host of African human rights organizations. These groups, as did our State Department in 2006, made the point that this is not merely a local question to which deference should be paid, but a common precept of international law and humanity. Our State Department said:
Nigerian Legislation Threatens to Limit Rights of Sexual Minorities***
The freedoms of speech, association, expression, assembly, and religion are long-standing international commitments and are universally recognized. Nigeria, as a State Party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, has assumed important obligations on these matters. We expect the Government of Nigeria to act in a manner consistent with those obligations.
Just this week the European Parliament resolved:
http://www.queerty.c...
Section J, article 6 of Resolution B6-105 reads:
[The European Parliament] Calls on the Nigerian Parliament not to adopt the proposed 'Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act' in its current form, since it contains infringements of the basic human rights of freedom of expression and opinion, in particular when it envisages a five-year prison sentence for anyone involved publicly or privately in positive representation of or advocacy for same sex relationships.
We'll see what Akinola says about this particular legislation (he has been teetering back and forth on the issue). As of now, his silence has been deafening. It will also be interesting to see if the breakaway churches continue to support Akinola, since some claim not to have known of his policies when they voted to break away:
But they knew little about the Nigerian legislation. Some had read a story in the Washington Post, and a fairly vague response from one of Akinola's U.S. representatives. They voted without knowing much more; and, as one pastor told me after the vote, the Nigerian bill "just wasn't on our radar." I talked to a half-dozen congregants in the various churches, and, although they didn't want a gay bishop, none of them supported the jail sentences prescribed in the Nigerian legislation.
As for the issue of the property, if the break away churches do lose title, they can always ask their movement's funders, the Scaife and other GOP foundations, to build them new ones.
It says the Utah leadership is concerned about "a creeping authoritarianism, both in the claims made by the (leadership) groups that produce the (restrictive) documents and also in the manner they are employed in worldwide discussion."
And I would note this great line:
"The interpretation of Holy Scripture is impoverished by narrow understandings and by the selective application of such understandings to complex moral issues," they added. "There is no single biblical morality."
And, yea, you're right. We wouldn't want outsiders inflaming the situation. We wouldn't want this to turn in a Kulturkampf .
Nice photo. Very tasteful.
Gee, sounds like the beginning steps in Nigeria.
Nice policies your guy is saying nothing about.
That's a tasteful picture. You want to see really grimy pictures of gays' injuries? You get off on that?
Associated PressDETROIT - A 72-year-old man attacked last week outside his downtown Detroit apartment building and left paralyzed from the neck down died Friday.
Andrew Anthos was on a city bus Feb. 13 when a man asked him if he was gay. The man followed Anthos off the bus at the stop in front of his building and beat him with a metal pipe.
Anthos, whose family said he was gay, was taken to a hospital and later fell into a coma.
***
Anthos waged a 20-year campaign to illuminate the dome of the state Capitol in red, white and blue for one night each year.
Nonetheless, I apologize for my "get off" comment, which was not called for. However, my zeal to protect gays from hate crimes and the slippery slope of stripping them of rights will continue unabated.
The good news? http://news.yahoo.co...
Michigan state Sen. Hansen Clarke, who knew the slain Andrew Anthos through his efforts to light the Capitol dome, said Tuesday he will reintroduce a bill in coming days to include sexual orientation in Michigan's hate crimes law.
***"Because Andrew was such a patriot, because he loved this country so much and the state of Michigan so much, his death can have some impact."
Anthos, a 72-year-old gay man whose great dream was to light the Michigan State Capitol dome in red, white and blue each Fourth of July, was helping a wheelchair-bound friend through the snow when a fellow bus rider, irked with his singing, and spouting gay slurs, bludgeoned him from behind with a metal pipe. Anthos lingered, paralyzed from the neck down, for 10 days before dying.
It's just stories like this are why I'm so emotional when a commenter implies a picture of someone's bruised thigh is untasteful.
I can't help but be reminded of the study that suggested the more anti-gay one is, the more likely the person is to be aroused by gay porn... hmmmm. Self-loathing?
When I went to Alexandria's Christ Church, we were told that General Lee received communion the day before he renounced his Union officership.
This is someone from Orkney Spring, VA, by the name of John Chilton. He has lots of info on his site (I was browsing through archives), he has direct links to favorite Episcopal sites, and at the very bottom left there is a blogger's ring which leads you to numerous bloggers on Episcopal matters around the world. I was not sure of his slant on the issues -- he seems interested in presenting a lot of info though.
I think I shall leave this topic unless there's a really big news item to relate, such as resolution of the Nigerian law issue. My interest in the issue was mainly gay rights in general. The Episcopal churches of St. Marks in DC and Christ Church nurtured my spiritual search, but I've gone in another (UU) direction.
I do hope that any disputes within the church are settled amicably and benefiting mankind.
I'm a Christian only because Christ told us we should all love one another....I could also be many other religions as well so long as that tenant is followed. I am not gay myself, but I do see what I hope is The Holy Spirit leading the Episcopal Church toward a place where gays are included at all levels of leadership and participation.
I had to laugh about the leader of the Southern Baptist Convention's recent pronouncement (acknowledgment) that homosexuality might be how God actually made some people...a biological phenomenon. But then he went on to state that we should move toward a "cure" for the condition. Did he not consider that homosexuality might be part of The Human Condition....part of God's divine plan for us...for a reason?
I agree with everything you said. It is interesting that the Southern Baptist guy is getting flak for saying that the evidence is pointing towards a genetics base -- and I think he's right on that part.
PZ Myers, who writes Phyrngula, and who is a biologist, said that the Creationists/fundamentalists have been harping on evolutionary biology and the real threat they face to their beliefs is in the area of neurology, where huge advances are being made into the causes of behavior. Essentially, he said that the evidence is mounting that a lot of our behavior is beyond our control (i.e., even our "rational" decision making process). It's another area I need to read up on.
As to the "cure," I have seen a few very sad "cure" failures when all the parents had to do was say, "My child, I love and accept you as you are."