Yesterday I attended my first civil ceremony, or Gay wedding if you like.
I didn't get round to writing anything about it last night due to over indulgence in very straight red wine and slightly gay champagne.
First off, I have to say, I come from small town Scotland and we don't have any people of that persuasion up there. I had never met any one who 'gets on the other bus' until I settled in England.
That being said, you might think I could have some hang up's or phobias or the likes ,you know, coming from a place where there are definitely no gays. And equally the opposite would apply to big town dwellers where all would be accepted as part of the diversity found in a multi cultured, liberal society.
So, imagine my surprise when I had to tell people at work why I was taking time off, at the titters and sniggers there were.
This made me cast my mind back to recent radio features I'd heard ( and the ones from when civil partnerships were first introduced) and how public opinion is so split on matters of personal sexuality and lifestyle choice.
I remember how people phoned in to vent there spleen and quote from the bible and how 'angry of Tunbridge Wells' spoke of outrage and fire and brimstone.
Well here's the rant you may have been expecting.
You may, if you are straight Anglo Saxon, Protestant and anally retentive, think you have the right to criticize or have an opinion on how a section of society, live there lives. You may think , given how straight you are, that the only relationship that is 'right' is one between a man and a woman. You are wrong.
The civil ceremony is in my opinion ( and I may not always be right, but I'm never wrong) long overdue for people to publicly express there commitment to each other.
The one I attended yesterday was a honor to attend. Every one there witnessed two people who love one another , pledge there future to each other in a way that's been too long in coming.
It really doesn't matter what bits fit into where, or if you wear a vest or a bodice, or if you like lemon or pink, or even if you walk 'a bit funny' , if more people were like my friends , the world would be a happier, more pleasant place.
ps.
At the celebration meal afterwards, I ate a gay mans cheese. How's that for a small town Scotsman.
This rant is not intended to cause accidental offence to Anglo Saxon, anally retentive small minded eyebrow raisers. It's deliberate.
Grumpy old man ? As soon as I hit 40 I became grumpy. I'm not even sure if it is grumpyness, its being able to spot the the stupidity of others in this day and age of so much stupidity. It's a gift I have and I insist on sharing it with you. How lucky you are. Well now, old age is settling nicely..and know this...I no longer care what you think!!!!
4 comments:
I wept when I read this!
You are so very sweet!
A few words on 'marriage'
The 'traditional family values' people place immense emphasis on something they call 'Christian marriage', but what they are talking about is in fact a modern invention.
It did not exist in the early Church, nor indeed for the first 1100 years of the Church's history.
Marriage didn't even have the status of a sacrament till the Lateran Council of 1179. Before then, Christians got married in a secular legal ceremony, based on that used in pre-Christian days by the Romans, followed by a wedding-feast.
To this could be added a simple religious blessing (either 0f the couple themselves or of the marriage-bed), which included prayers and an invocation of Christian patron saints. The ceremony did not have to take place in church.
The sacramental status of Protestant and Catholic marriage is odd.
Some conservative theologians have called it anomalous. In important respects it does not even fit the canonical definition of a sacrament.
Oddest of all, it is the only sacrament where the minister or priest has no power of performance.
The couple being married are, technically, their own ministers or celebrants.
The minister is there only to give the blessing AFTERWARDS and to confirm publicly that a marriage has been performed.
To see the minister's role in a marriage-service as equivalent to her/his role at Mass or Communion is to misunderstand the very nature of what is going on.
The early Church solemnised same-sex marriages on equal terms with mixed-sex marriages. This fact has been 'forgotten' for about 300 years (not long in the life of a 2000 year old Church) but it is now back in the light of day, bright and clear. Some of the original services have now been reprinted.
These same-sex ceremonies invoked the blessings of pairs of male saints (including Jesus's disciples Philip and Bartholomew) and they omitted the mention of children. Otherwise they are parallel in form and substance to the heterosexual ceremonies.
In the old service-books, they are placed one after the other.
The fact that the early Church celebrated same-sex marriages, and went on doing so for three-quarters of its existence to-date, suggests that neither the Apostles nor their successors thought there was anything in the teaching of Jesus, or elsewhere in the Bible, that gave grounds for Christians to discriminate on grounds of sexuality.
For more information on same-sex marriage look at
Same Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe
by Professor J Boswell, New York, 1994
A final point to the paragraph
a few words on marriage....
This is quoted from a book called
Homophobia and the bible by
Michael Halls isbn 1-902706-00-5 £3.99 and provides further detailed information :
Quote :
One specific principle generated the homophobic rhetoric of these early Church Fathers:
a passionate conviction that women are greatly inferior to men. Fuelled by tthis unpleasant prejudice, they denounced male male anal sex as being a betrayal of the essential superiority of man over woman because, the way they looked at it, this seemed to reduce one of the men to having the status of a woman. John Chrysostom shows this sentiment with frankness -
to our eyes, startling frankness -
In his remarks on Romans 1 for instance, he argues that though dogs are useful animals in themselves, a man would be rightly insulted by a suggestion that he might turn himself into a dog. Surely, therefore a man must be utterly enraged by the thought of degrading himself so very far as to behave like a woman.
Few now would hesitate before rejecting this whole attitude.
Chrysostom's contempt and loathing for pregnancy and childbirth are difficult to read without disgust. Yet it is this which generates his and his contemporaries homophobia, blinding them even to the fact - perfrectly well known in their day- that to reduce either love or sexuality to questions of anatomical mechanics is a surreal diminution of our lives.
It was not till more than 700 years after Chrysostom's death that the Church began moving towards an institutional control of marriage and sexuality, and hence towards institutional homophobia. Ironically, this takes us into the High Middle Ages, the most morally, doctrinally and politically corrupt period in the entire history of the Church. Most of these mediaeval corruptions including a virulent and murderous anti-semitism, have now been reformed out of the various branches of the Church. Most, not all. Homophobia is the one and last, and perhaps the most persistent, still remaining.
Roman Catholics and some Anglicans declare that the church doctrine is founded in the traditions of the Church as well as in Scripture. They are referring to a very select slice through a history which could be called, at best, both rich and chequered.
Readin one way, Church history can provide stronger authority for a vicious anti-semitism than for say priestly celibacy, or the sacramental status of marriage. It would not be intrinsically wrong for these churches to reassess their current line of sight through the past, and to abolish what was once a modiaeval novelty. After all, they have done it before, in respect of slavery, ploygamy, usury, and the shape of the solar system.
unquote....
Oh thank you 'anonymous' for cutting and pasting your comments re "I want to be a lesbian" .
To be honest, I dont really know if your for or against same sex marriage, I suspect the later.
However, given the modern day church has been stuck in the middle age's since ...the middle ages, its not really suprising that your comments come based on ancient history and are at best confusing.
my blog refers to an event where two people made pleges to each other.
I dont think any history lesson before or after would have changed there minds, influenced them , or even given them much basis for conversation.
So, thanks a lot 'Anonymous'. You dont come from Tunbridge Wells, do you?.
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