Is The Church Obsessed with Sex?

No, though sometimes yes.

A substantial batch of paperwork has been released by the CofE in advance of February's General Synod meeting. Apart from some proposals to end so-called 'paupers funerals', most of them have been ignored by the main media outlets. It is only on the comparatively rare occasions when the CofE mention sex that the media beast wakes up and howls at the moon. .

So, inevitably, one document has generated more electronic newsprint than all the rest put together. And you can guess what it's about.  It's a so-called 'Pastoral Statement' about civil partnerships. I say so-called, because the general opinion is that it's not very pastoral, and because it's actually more of a clarification of the status of civil partnerships vis a vis marriage. Civil partnerships are now almost legally indistinguishable from marriage, so the statement addresses how far church teaching on marriage applies to civil partnerships. It's quite clear from the introduction to the document that this is its purpose.

What has caused most of the upset, as far as I can see, is that the document restates the traditional teaching of the church on marriage, in pretty much the same terms as it stated it 15 years ago. So whilst CofE leaders are talking about 'radical inclusion' and the church as a whole is following a 'listening process', the document strikes a different tone to all of that. It's not hard to see how that creates a dissonance, it looks to those who want the church to change its teaching that all this chat about inclusion and listening is just smoke and mirrors, and that nothing has changed, or will change.

There's plenty about this going on elsewhere - see Ian Pauls comments section for example - but for what it's worth....

1. The media is obsessed with sex, not the church. Westboro Baptist Church has a membership of 50, and yet is the subject of countless articles, documentaries, TV programmes, chat show discussions etc. Why? Because of their attitude to sex and how they express it. Don't give them the oxygen of publicity. My two churches have a combined membership 3x the size of Westboro, we have no placards, and we're still waiting for that call from Louis Theroux.

2. This is what happens when a body trying to communicate with its own members ends up speaking to everyone.

Christian discipleship includes a form of discipline (the clue's in the noun), just like commitment to any other path, be it losing weight, learning a skill or doing a paid job. What applies to Christians doesn't apply to people who aren't Christians. I don't follow the rules or practices of Weight Watchers, or the Labour Party, but members of both have certain rules and values they're supposed to abide by.  I shouldn't be scandalised if Weight Watches raises its weight loss target by 50%, or cancels the membership of people who don't turn up to meetings - I'm not a member of the group, it's nothing to do with me. It may be wise for me to act a bit more like a member of Weight Watchers (no comment), but that's as far as it goes. It may be wise for people to act a bit more like some of the things the church commends (forgiveness, generosity etc.) but that's as far as it goes. The rules, teaching and values of a group apply in full to group members only. But the rules, teaching and values of the CofE seem to be everyone's property. The signatories to the letter of protest at the Bishops statement go way beyond church members.

3. As someone who didn't have sex before I got married - and have never regretted that - I'm not sure how I would feel if my church declared that that was all a mistake, and I needn't have bothered with all that restraint nonsense. It was challenging, difficult,, and went against the flow of the culture I was raised in - raise that by a factor of 10 for the present day. I'm glad I did it, and would encourage others to do the same, even though most of the couples I do weddings for already have kids, and nearly all of them are living together. I pray God would bless them and give them fantastic marriages, and am delighted for all of them that they've found love in each other. Yet it would still be a massive kick in the guts if the CofE decided that (somehow) sex and marriage didn't belong together, and decoupled the ultimate act of commitment and the ultimate act of loving vulnerability. There are those of us for whom the CofE's 'definition of marriage' is how we have faithfully tried to live out our following of Jesus, it isn't something we need to apologise for.

4. Just as the 'settled results of modern scholarship' look like laughable guff a couple of generations later, we have not reached a settled shared morality on sexuality as a society. Far from it. Would you look at our rates of porn use (especially among children) sexual violence, relationship breakup, gender confusion (the Tavistock centre is now being sued for its gender transition practices by someone who experienced them as a child), the high pitched tone of all debates around gender sex and ethics, rising incidence of STDs, etc and think: 'they've really got all this sussed, if any society has got a mature and well considered take on sexuality its the UK in 2020'? That doesn't mean coming to no conclusions at all, but it does mean we need to hold our conclusions in a proper spirit of liberalism, rather than absolute conviction that we are right, and everyone else is wicked.

Married Couples Tax Allowance - is it 'Discrimination'?

In the Friday evening leaders questions, Jeremy Corbyn described the marriage tax allowance - currently worth £250 to married couples - as a form of discrimination, which he would abolish*.

Is it?

Is the tax on plastic bags discrimination against people who don't use paper bags, large pockets or cardboard boxes?

Is the tax on petrol and diesel discrimination against people who use cars rather than bicycles?

Is the tax on alcoholic drinks discrimination against people who prefer beer to lemonade?

Is a higher rate of tax on people earning £80,000 or above discrimination against the better paid?

Most of the taxes above are attempts to influence behaviour, and raise/redistribute money at the same time. And there is a very good case for influencing the behaviour of couples towards marriage. People who are married report higher satisfaction in the relationship than cohabitees, and cohabiting parents are 3x more likely than married couples to split up before their children reach 5. The high divorce rate comes a distant second to the breakup rate of cohabiting parents. The relative stability of marriage compared to the alternatives is clear, and consistent.

There are other factors - marriage is still the 'done thing' amongst the middle classes, and those with higher education, so there are cultural factors. Also, the financial barriers to marriage which come with the consumer add-ons now considered normal (dress, reception, gifts to the guests) make it prohibitively expensive, ruling it out for most people on low incomes. But despite this, married couples make a public commitment to stability and faithfulness, which when seen through is of huge benefit to the couple, to their children, and to society. So why shouldn't the tax system give this a little bit of encouragement? It's not discrimination, its encouraging beneficial behaviour.

Discuss......

*(Incidentally, the Labour manifesto doesn't refer to this policy, or at least any search for 'marriage' 'couples' 'tax' 'allowance' etc. doesn't find it, but if you've the time to read the whole thing and I'm wrong, then mea culpa. The Lib Dems have the same policy, and their manifesto has it in print).

Sex Education from the BBC: what's missing?

More than a third of women and a quarter of men in their teens and early 20s admitted it had not been "the right time" when they first had sex.  Thus the BBC reports on the 'National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles'. They then give a helpful list for anyone wondering...

When is the right time?

• If you think you might have sex, ask yourself:
• Does it feel right?
• Do I love my partner?
• Does he/she love me just as much?
• Have we talked about using condoms to prevent STIs and HIV, and was the talk OK?
• Have we got contraception organised to protect against pregnancy?
• Do I feel able to say "no" at any point if I change my mind, and will we both be OK with that

Yup, 'Am I married to my partner'? doesn't come into it. The first 3 conditions are subjective - the survey assumes that children as young as 13 are able to answer these questions well and be 'sexually competent' Have they ever met a 13 year old? All the criteria would be also satisfied by someone cheating on their partner.  The only moral question here is consent - tick that box and everything else is ok. Is sex really that trivial? 

I note in passing that the report never refers to 'children' - "22.4% and 36.2% of men and women who had first sex at age 13–14 years were categorised as ‘sexually competent". Child sexual behaviour is reported as if it were adult sexual behaviour. Am I alone in finding that a bit disturbing?

The genuinely radical option here is to honour sex as the ultimate physical expression of commitment, saved for the one person to whom you make the lifelong covenant pledge of marriage. Even if you don't buy the 'sex as an expression of commitment' thing and just want to be pragmatic about it, if you value the relationship you're in, you'll wait, as it's better for the relationship.  

There are public health benefits too: sexually transmitted diseases are transmitted by, you guessed it... They jumped massively in 2012-15, and the number of people attending sexual health clinics in Wales has doubled in just 5 years. There would be dramatic falls in STIs if it was normal to pursue faithfulness to a single partner and public health policy encouraged people to wait. Sure, not everyone will do it: not everyone takes up the MMR vaccine either but that doesn't make it bad practice. And it could save the NHS up to £1bn a year, which is before we get into all the other financial costs of a culture of casual sex.  A culture which the BBC itself has been normalising for decades. 

One of the complaints in the Br***t debate is that you can't question immigration without being labelled as racist. Can we discuss sexual behaviour without being labelled as moralising? 

Not Doing What Comes Naturally

YouGov has surveyed attitudes on polygamy, to see if there is a direction of travel for further 'liberalisation' in the definition of marriage. (I put 'liberalisation' in quotation marks because the word has a positive suggestion of freedom. It's like using the word 'decay' to describe change, it's not a neutral term).

39% of Brits think humans are not monogamous by nature, but at the same time only 18% think that polygamy is morally acceptable. Even though only 42% (!) think we're naturally monogamous, nearly 3/4 think that monogamous relationships can be successful if people work at it hard enough.

So for some of us at least, we don't think the law around marriage, sexuality and relationships should be based on what comes naturally to us. I'd have liked to see a follow up question to those who thought having multiple partners was natural but immoral: why? Or to the 47% who believe that, even if everyone involved gives their consent, having multiple relationships at the same time is wrong. Why?

YouGov, from what I can see, hasn't started tracking these results over time, so there's no way of telling if attitudes are changing, and by how much. Much of our education and culture around sex is based on informed consent: if you want to do it, and they want to do it, then what's the problem. There's also a presumption of freedom: do what you want to do, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone.

There's a sizeable chunk of Brits (I'm one) which doesn't believe that 'natural' is a reliable guide to 'moral' or 'legal'. If it was, we wouldn't need so many laws: but many of us find it 'natural' to hit people, cheat, speed, steal, fiddle taxes, lie, be greedy etc. Deferred gratification is one of the key skills learned early in life, to learn to say 'no' to what we want RIGHT NOW. Self control, in other words. The idea of self control when it comes to sex has become counter-cultural in the space of 3 generations. We've also been very nervous about promoting monogamy and its benefits (look at the recent fight around the token recognition of marriage in the tax system) because that's seen as stigmatising lone parents or being nanny state about people's sexual choices.

We may one day arrive at the right balance of nature and choice on one hand, and morality and self-control on the other. But leaving it all to the individual to make their own mistakes and find their own way is cruel. We're surrounded by the wreckage. There is an accumulated wisdom about marriage and relationships from many generations, and from Christian teaching, but we've been too nervous in talking about it because we don't want to be seen as lecturing people about sex and their own personal choices.

Christian teaching about sin is clear: doing what comes naturally isn't the same as doing what is good. Judging by the survey results, a lot of people get that, but talking about 'sin' will get us nowhere in a post-Christian society. How do we talk about God's gift of sex in a way that holds on to the wisdom, but still gets heard?

Love Is....

The following piece was penned for the local newspaper, but as a dedicated recycler....

"Love is patient

love is kind

Love does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud

Love is not rude, it is not self-seeking

it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth

It always protects, always trusts

always hopes, always perseveres."

It’s the height of the wedding season. In line with national trends, we’re doing more weddings this year at St. James than last year, which in turn was busier than the year before. More often than not, the couple choose these famous words as one of the readings. Originally written by St. Paul 2000 years ago to a feuding church in Corinth, they’ve stood the test of time as a vivid picture of love in action.

Standing in front of the newly married Mr and Mrs, I ask them to take that reading, and cross out the word ‘love’. Then write in their own first name. David is patient (#fail) David is kind (sometimes), David does not envy … I’ll stop there. You can tell a lot about the character of the bride and groom from the amount of laughter coming from their guests at each line!

The words from Corinthians act as a plumb-line, a standard that we can measure ourselves against, because love can grow, or it can decay. One trend that really encourages me is the number of couples doing marriage preparation with us. Not preparation for the event, but for married life after it. How to talk, how to forgive, how to resolve conflict, agreeing your goals and values, working out a pattern of time together and apart.

All the couples who do marriage prep find it hugely helpful. Often the men need dragging along to the first session, but by week 3 everyone is telling their workmates about it. Having time to take stock, to learn, to invest in each other, is the best time a couple can spend before their wedding day.

It really doesn’t matter how much you spend in cash on the celebrations, its what you spend on each other in time, attention and love that makes the difference. Marriages might be made in heaven, but the couple pick up the maintenance contract.

And what’s true for marriage is true for friendship, and for our own characters as well. We reap what we sow. CS Lewis wrote “Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of.” (yes, I know I posted the same quote yesterday)

When I stand in front of the happy couple, I pray that they’ll make a daily decision to love. When it’s easy, and when it’s hard. So that each time they put their name into the Corinthians reading, they’ll find it’s a little closer to the truth. 

Questions

With one or two exceptions, I've avoided blogging on same-sex marriage. The bishops of the CofE in the Lords have issued a statement today saying that they'll 'constructively engage' in trying to make the same-sex marriage bill as good as it can be, and seem to have accepted that it will become law.

I was struck by this part of the statement:  it is crucial that marriage as newly defined is equipped to carry within it as many as possible of the virtues of the understanding of marriage it will replace.

This recognises that the passage of the bill will introduce a new definition of marriage. As it currently stands, that definition does not include a notion of sexual fidelity (the flipside of having no definition of adultery), of the complimentarity of the sexes, of procreation within marriage, or of consummation. It is therefore significantly different to what I signed up to on my wedding day nearly 17 years ago, and to the churches stated teaching on marriage, which in turn is reflected in our wedding liturgies. 

Two questions:
Firstly: if the Same-Sex Marriage Act definition of marriage becomes the 'official' definition, do we need to coin another term to signify committed relationships which include the above elements? One tweeter yesterday suggested 'Holy Matrimony', which has pedigree, but sounds a bit 1662. It also misses out the fact that none of the above 4 elements are specifically religious.

Secondly: if clergy are to continue as 'clerk in holy orders', and to act as registrars for marriage, what is our legal status now that the state definition of marriage has changed? In presiding at, and registering, a marriage, I'm already doing something which goes by the same name as a civil marriage ceremony, isn't the same, but has sufficient overlap to be ok. If the new definition of marriage leaves out 'the virtues of the understanding of marriage it will replace', then at what point do civil and church marriage become two separate-but-related, rather than overlapping, things? In other countries civil and church weddings are kept separate, and  maybe it's time to reckon with that here as well. As Jonathan Chaplin puts it:

I don’t literally mean that I was married twice on the same day but only that my marriage was solemnized in two successive ceremonies. Here I want to argue that the great advantage of this two-step arrangement is that it puts on clear display the quite distinct roles of church and government in the public recognition of marriage, to the benefit of both. It affirms both roles while avoiding a blurring of their complementary objectives. It also protects the proper freedom of both church and government to operate on their own understandings of marriage. It is a model I wish to commend to the Church of England – indeed to all churches. I also want to argue the more specific point that the longstanding expectation that Anglican parish churches will marry any legally eligible resident has now become a burden from which the Church of England should seek to extricate itself. These two reforms would be mutually reinforcing in working towards the goal of liberating the church to witness better to the truth it professes about marriage. (In fact, if the first were achieved, the second would follow automatically.)

What would the impact be? We've got more church weddings this year than at any time since I joined this church, and I love the fact that the CofE is open to anyone in the parish who wants to be married here. It's a great chance to explore spiritual and relationship questions with people, and I also think we offer a much better marriage preparation and support package. Simply as a service to families and to the community, I wouldn't want to see that lost. 

Justin Welby's speech on same-sex marriage in the Lords

....It is clearly essential that stable and faithful same sex relationships should, where those involved want it, be recognised and supported with as much dignity and the same legal effect as marriage. Although the majority of Bishops who voted during the whole passage of the Civil Partnerships Act through your Lordships' House were in favour of civil partnerships a few years ago, it is also absolutely true that the church has often not served the LGBT communities in the way it should. I must express my sadness and sorrow for that considerable failure. There have been notable exceptions, such as my predecessor Archbishop Ramsey who vigorously supported decriminalisation in the 1960s. 

It is also necessary to express, as has been done already, total rejection of homophobic language, which is wrong – and more than that, sickening. 

However, I and many of my colleagues remain with considerable hesitations about this Bill. My predecessor Lord Williams of Oystermouth showed clearly last summer, in evidence during the consultation period, that it has within it a series of category errors. It confuses marriage and weddings. It assumes that the rightful desire for equality – to which I’ve referred supportively – must mean uniformity, failing to understand that two things may be equal but different. And as a result it does not do what it sets out to do, my Lords. Schedule 4 distinguishes clearly between same gender and opposite gender marriage, thus not achieving true equality. 

The result is confusion. Marriage is abolished, redefined and recreated, being different and unequal for different categories. The new marriage of the Bill is an awkward shape with same gender and different gender categories scrunched into it, neither fitting well. The concept of marriage as a normative place for procreation is lost. The idea of marriage as covenant is diminished. The family in its normal sense, predating the state and as our base community of society – as we’ve already heard – is weakened. These points will be expanded on by others in the debate, I’m sure, including those from these benches.

For these and many other reasons, those of us in the churches and faith groups who are extremely hesitant about the Bill in many cases hold that view because we think that traditional marriage is a corner stone of society, and rather than adding a new and valued institution alongside it for same gender relationships, which I would personally strongly support to strengthen us all, this Bill weakens what exists and replaces it with a less good option that is neither equal nor effective. This is not a faith issue, although we are grateful for the attention that government and the other place have paid to issues of religious freedom – deeply grateful. But it is not, at heart, a faith issue; it is about the general social good. And so with much regret but entire conviction, I cannot support the Bill as it stands.

full text here. Worth reading.

I've been struggling to put into words my own thoughts on the matter, not least because of trying to second-guess the reactions of other people. But this says a lot of what I would want to say, and says it better than I could. 

Bonhoeffer on Marriage: is marriage a 'given'?

By some odd irony, I was starting a marriage prep group at roughly the moment the gay marriage vote happened in the House of Commons. We use the excellent (if slightly posh) Marriage Preparation Course from Holy Trinity Brompton, and it includes part of this quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

God is guiding your marriage. Marriage is more than your love for each other. It has a higher dignity and power, for it is God’s holy ordinance, through which He wills to perpetuate the human race till the end of time. In your love you see only your two selves in the world, but in marriage you are a link in the chain of the generations, which God causes to come and to pass away to His glory, and calls into His kingdom. 

In your love you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsibility towards the world and mankind. Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more that something personal – it is a status, an office. Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the king, so it is marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sight of God and man. As you first gave the ring to one another and have now received it a second time from the hand of the pastor, so love comes from you, but marriage from above, from God. As high as God is above man, so high are the sanctity the rights, and the promise of marriage above the sanctity, the rights, and the promise of love.

It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love. God makes your marriage indissoluble. ‘What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder’ (Matthew 19:6). God joins you together in marriage; it is His act, not yours.

Beautiful stuff. And it's this idea of marriage as an office which is at the core of my struggle with the commons vote. Ultimately, is there something 'given' about marriage, as with a vocation, or is it something we construct entirely ourselves whether as a society or as two individuals? Pragmatic post-modern society doesn't have much time for 'givens', things don't have intrinsic value, they must be justified, reasoned for, have cost/benefit analyses done upon them. And if there are no givens then we can redefine and recast whatever we want. 

So the fundamental question is; is this the way the world is? Do we live in a world with certain human and creation 'givens', or not?  There are two discussions to be had here (and often they go on at once without us disconnecting them). One is between the Christian and the atheist/agnostic over whether there is a God at all from whom God-given things can be said to come. The other is between Christians over what is and isn't God-given. 

Final thought: the definition of marriage above is something that can't be encapsulated in a secular marriage ceremony. Two committed Christians who are getting married are doing something that is both identical, but at the same time very different, to the marriage of two non-believers. So how a secular state define marriage can never be sufficient to satisfy a Christian. 

and if you haven't already had enough of this, there's a good piece on God and Politics reflecting on the vote.

Marriage: what's up for grabs?

Amidst all the sound and fury around redefining marriage this week, I've been trying to work out what I think. The Ugley Vicar has already pointed out a lack of clear thinking in government about what marriage is, and what it is actually trying to do. 

So much of the debate seems to come down to whether or not marriage is a 'given', an institution, something which exists independently of our efforts to define or redefine it. And if it is a 'given', how much of that is up for grabs, and how much of the nature of marriage can be tweaked from culture to culture? So the Church of England, for example, has moved from a set of marriage vows where the wife promises to 'obey' and the husband to 'worship', to creating an alternative symmetrical set of vows, to taking the symmetrical vows as the norm. 

Here's Dietrich Bonhoeffer Marriage is more than your love for each other. It has a higher dignity and power, for it is God’s holy ordinance, through which He wills to perpetuate the human race till the end of time. In your love you see only your two selves in the world, but in marriage you are a link in the chain of the generations, which God causes to come and to pass away to His glory, and calls into His kingdom. In your love you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsibility towards the world and mankind. Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more that something personal – it is a status, an office.

This sense of an office is part of the furniture of Christian thinking, whether we are thinking about leadership in the church (apostles/bishops etc.) thinking about power (kings, prophets, the place of the law), work and rest (sabbath), or relationships. There are some 'givens' which God has put in place, for our good and for the good of community and the planet. Even in secular terms, we still recognise a 'vocation', that sense of a call which comes from beyond you to take a particular place in society as teacher, healer, carer, pursuer of knowledge etc.  

Postmodern liberalism, on the other hand, doesn't recognise any givens. Everything is a social construction, everything is up for grabs. Inherited institutions, from the monarchy to the Lords to the church to marriage, carry no intrinsic authority, and have to justify their existence on the same terms as everything else. All is merit and practicality. And there's plenty to be said for this. I would much rather have a competent Bishop than one who says 'I'm the bishop of (insert), this is what I do', to justify any action. 

The political and cultural outworking of this is the extension of free choice into any and every area of life, from conception to cremation. The battle over assisted dying is the same as the battle over marriage, is individual free choice sovereign, and does anything else trump it? The proponents of euthanasia, consistently led by the BBC, will not let this one drop until they win it. 

However the flipside of this is that any principal that liberalism appeals to must be a social construct as well. You can't reject all 'given' social institutions, and then insist on innate and given moral values. The notion of 'equality' which the government is currently appealing to is a social construct too, and just as open to challenge as the institutions it is used to challenge. 

The Biblical description of marriage - the exclusive and life-long union of one man and one woman, instituted and blessed by God - is consistently affirmed from Genesis 1 to the arrival of the 'Bride' in Revelation. It is a microcosm of the human race, a reflection of the love of God for his creation, the ideal context for having and raising children (though the Bible wouldn't recognise our nuclear family, operating as an independent unit from any form of community or clan). There are things that are like marriage: a parents commitment to their children is (hopefully) life long, there are deep friendships which offer companionship, there are extended families who support the rearing of children. Marriage doesn't have a monopoly on the social goods it embodies. But that doesn't mean that other relationships which carry these social goods need to be renamed 'marriage'. 

This is not simply a matter of equality, or justice, it's a deep philosophical and cultural issue about the very structure of existence. Are we simply making it up as we go along, or is there some kind of a structure to human existence and society which actually needs to be respected and worked with? It doesn't strike me that this week has made these questions any clearer, or helped us to resolve them. 

Other bits worth reading:
Peter Ould has several posts
God and Politics notes that ignoring the public response to the 'consultation' is seen as a badge of honour by the Equalities Minister. 

CofE Response to Marriage Consultation

The CofE has published its response to the government consultation on changing the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples. The consultation closes on Thursday.

the response begins: (the proposed changes) would alter the intrinsic nature of marriage as the union of a man and a woman, as enshrined in human institutions throughout history. Marriage benefits society in many ways, not only by promoting mutuality and fidelity, but also by acknowledging an underlying biological complementarity which, for many, includes the possibility of procreation.

We have supported various legal changes in recent years to remove unjustified discrimination and create greater legal rights for same sex couples and we welcome that fact that previous legal and material inequities between heterosexual and same-sex partnerships have now been satisfactorily addressed. To change the nature of marriage for everyone will be divisive and deliver no obvious legal gains given the rights already conferred by civil partnerships. We also believe that imposing for essentially ideological reasons a new meaning on a term as familiar and fundamental as marriage would be deeply unwise.

full response here, 13 pages worth. Press release here

Bishop Tim Stevens, quoted by the BBC: "I think the difficulty we have here is the substitution of equality for uniformity, that is to say that there can be no distinction at all between men and women," he said.

"From a standing start within three months to arrive at a fully considered, weighed and articulated redefinition of a fundamental social institution which has been thought about in one particular way for centuries... to change all that on the basis of a consultation like this seems to be at the very least unwise and ill considered."

There are several headlines that suggest that the main issue is whether the CofE will need to be disestablished. That's completely beside the point, and isn't one of the main arguments in the submission. This isn't about the CofE keeping any special status, though changes to that status might be a consequence of changes in the definition of marriage.
 
I guess I'm contributing to all the chatter about this today, when I'd much rather the CofE was focusing on other issues, but Clegg and Cameron did ask what we thought. And it's important to get this right, rather than make a fundamental social change in a very short time-frame to appease a few LibDem backbenchers.

The consultation itself is about mechanics, not about principle: This consultation is about how we best remove the ban on same-sex couples having a civil marriage, not on whether this should or should not  happen says the Home Office consultation page. Which would, if they wanted to, enable the government to dismiss the entire CofE response on a technicality. The language used ('ban') and the way the whole thing is set up shows that the government doesn't actually want a public debate on this.

Coalition for Marriage: Some Speech is Freer than Others

The Coalition for Marriage is campaigning, in response to government consultations and moves on the issue, to preserve the current legal definition of marriage as the lifelong union of one man and one woman.

A link on the C4m home page, which enables people to respond to the government consultation on proposals to enable same sex 'marriage' has run in to 'technical problems', with over 4000 responses to the consultation being blocked as spam by Home Office software.

Meanwhile Cranmer has been reported to the Advertising Standards Authority for carrying a C4M advert (below). This is pretty appalling: whatever your views, if someone can't advocate marriage without being accused of being 'homophobic and offensive' then we're in a bit of a pickle. Echurch blog is keeping a running list of the number of bloggers posting in support.

(Update: the ASA have issued a statement on the case)

I don't see how it's possible to have a consultation, or a discussion of any sort, once we get into people threatening/taking legal action against positions they disagree with. Last time I looked we were a democracy in favour of free speech, though I'm starting to wonder.

Late Valentine: A Win-Win Gift

Spent Valentines night doing our marriage preparation course, which seemed like an appropriate way to spend Feb 14th. Must be the recession, that they'd all rather be at a free evening in church than an expensive restaurant.

In the meantime, God and Politics has some good stuff on National Marriage Week and the up and coming National Parenting Initiative, which is encouraging local churches to offer more in the way of parenting support.

Clegg on Marriage Part 2: We'll Take Your Toddlers

Following on from yesterdays post about Nick Cleggs views on marriage, there's also a deep contradiction at the heart of Cleggs speech on how to spend government money. Take this:

...I have made clear that intergenerational social mobility is the principal objective of the Coalition’s social policy. And why I have been so determined to increase our investment in the vital early years, including, recently, by extending the new two-year old offer to an additional 130,000 toddlers in working families

and a reminder of what Clegg said about state finance and marriage:
We can all agree that strong relationships between parents are important, but not agree that the state should use the tax system to encourage a particular family form.

Now I may be being thick here, but I can't actually see the difference between using state money to encourage marriage and using state money to encourage a particular model of childcare. Both are using state money to incentivise/encourage/nudge (pick your own) a particular family form.

In the first case, the family form is of two working parents, and the state picking up more of the childcare. This has various benefits for the government: a more flexible labour market, a chance to get it's OFSTED-regulated hands on the children of 'problem families' at an earlier stage, and some good headlines about spending money on kids. It also has benefits for families where both parents want to work (or need to work to pay for mortgage, student fees, fuel bills, you name it) it's less costly to do so with small children. It also extends the pressure on new mums to go back to paid work, and basically says that the government would prefer them doing this than the work of parenting.

So this isn't actually about whether the government should subsidise or incentivise a particular family form. It's politics: being sniffy about marriage puts clear yellow water between Clegg and the Tories, spending money on kids is like motherhood and apple pie. Unless your a mother of course, because you're being told that what you do doesn't matter as much as if you were on the checkout at Tesco. Clegg is simply continuing the social engineering begun under New Labour: let the state raise your children, now you go find your place in the economic machine.

If Clegg really wanted to be radical, he would make the offer of free childcare conditional. Not means-tested, but linked to some form of parenting support and training, such as Positive Parenting (used extensively by our local Sure Start centre). That would incentivise a social good (good parenting), whilst promoting the governments aim of early intervention in troubled families.

Nick Clegg's Straw Bride and Groom

The much trailed speech by Nick Clegg this morning has this passage about marriage:

The institutions of our society are constantly evolving. Just look at the way the roles of men and women, and attitudes to marriage and divorce, have changed over the last century.

We should not take a particular version of the family institution, such as the 1950s model of suit-wearing, bread-winning dad and aproned, homemaking mother – and try and preserve it in aspic.

That’s why open society liberals and big society conservatives will take a different view on a tax break for marriage. We can all agree that strong relationships between parents are important, but not agree that the state should use the tax system to encourage a particular family form.

As other people have already pointed out, this is a straw man and woman. I don't know of anyone who promotes marriage who is lobbying for the vision which Clegg describes here. It's not the marriage Nick Clegg has, and as far as I'm aware the tax break for married couples, small as it is, isn't means tested on the basis of ties and aprons.

More importantly, Clegg is sawing off the branch he sits on. The substance of his speech is an explanation of why a liberal vision of an 'open society' is better than either the conservative or the socialist vision. At the heart of the 'open society' is social mobility, the principal that a childs circumstances of birth shouldn't determine how life turns out for them. There are few things more destructive to a childs life chances than a fractured home life, and, for all its faults, marriage promotes stability.

The Centre for Social Justice points out that family breakdown among unmarried parents is much higher than among those who are married. This in turn has marked effects on poverty, education, mental health, ability to form successful relationships etc.
Liberals have been at the forefront of the campaign to recognise civil partnerships: a chance for people in committed gay relationships to formalise and mark their commitment to one another. It seems slightly odd that at the same time, Clegg is basically saying that this kind of ceremony doesn't really matter, and isn't something that society should value or promote.

If there is a family form which does the best job at promoting the kind of environment where both adults and children can thrive, then why shouldn't the government promote this? After all, it is promoting other social structures - the same speech mentions the extension of nursery education to more 2 year olds. That's using government money to promote a social structure: more 2 year olds raised in state/private education facilities and raised less in the family home.

Final point: there's a deep ideological problem in Clegg's speech. Whilst Labour saw the state as the answer to pretty much everything, in Clegg's 'open society', everything is about the individual. No merit is attached to social structures, even if they are ones valued and embraced by large numbers of individuals. The place of families, neighbourhoods, unions, charities, political parties, co-ops, churches is mentioned but ascribed to 'conservatism'. Maybe he wouldn't go so far as to say 'there is no such thing as society', but Clegg doesn't seem that far away. I certainly couldn't imagine him talking about the kind of mutual dependence and community life depicted in Acts and 1 Corinthians. Cleggs world consists of individuals and institutions (in constant need of reform by individuals), but very little in between. The liberal self sounds mightly lonely.

Breaking up marriages for a quick buck: Global Personals.

Too much on to blog today, instead please read this. It's about an online dating site which specifically targets married people, encouraging them to have affairs, and a campaign to get them to stop.

from the link:
I think your company, Global Personals is involved in toxic work. So, I am asking people who reads this letter and agrees with me to phone your offices and ask to speak to your senior colleagues to tell them about how affairs have affected their friends or family and to ask you to withdraw your adverts. We want you to withdraw your adverts and agree to not publicly advertise these kind of websites again.



Although we want people to be polite and reasonable when they contact you, we do want you to know that we are serious about this. If you choose to try and disrupt marriages to make money then we will try to disrupt your business. Your adverts are helping to poison our communities. We want to show that belief in strong relationships and commitment is as powerful as your aim to make money by creating misery for families and children.

Weddings 101

The Weddings Project has 7 top tips for vicars taking weddings this summer:

1. Introduce yourself with a smile
- some people are surprised to find how relaxed and friendly vicars really are.

2. Make those practical 'housekeeping' notices about confetti and phones before the bride comes in
- so the theatre of her arrival starts the service with style.

3. Make them in a permissive, friendly fashion
- how about: "make sure you turn your mobile back on after the service"?

4. Encourage everyone to make themselves at home
- let people know where they are free to move about, let children come forward or stand on a pew for a good view.

5. Practice the promise the guests will make
- some people think they have to whisper in church, but when you rehearse the guests 'we will' before the bride arrives, it really breaks the ice.

6. Have a paparazzi moment
- make sure everyone gets a good angle for photos or video, even if you have to restage the big moment at the end of the service.

7. Help guests keep their promise with prayer
- give a promise and prayer card to every guest. They can keep it by the bed or the kitchen sink and pray every day for the happy couple.

The prayer on the guest card reads: “Dear God, pour out the abundance of your blessing on them. Let their love for each other be a seal upon their hearts and a crown upon their heads. Bless them in their work and in their companionship; awake and asleep, in joy and in sorrow, in life and in death. Amen.”

There's a good page here with all sorts of resources for clergy for weddings, and marriage preparation. The Weddings Project has done some good work in talking to couples, guests and churches about what makes for a 'good wedding', and there's now a card designed specially for wedding guests as a memento of the day, with a prayer for the couple. It's a great idea, similar to the cards we give to godparents after a baptism (perhaps a card for baptism guests is the obvious next step?)

I'm both gratified and bemused by the comments I get after weddings. Gratified because there are some nice ones. Bemused, because people have obviously been to weddings which have been somewhere between uninspiring and an ordeal. We need to raise our game.

St. Valentines Day Mass Exit

There are some special CofE resources for Valentines Day, which happens to fall on a Sunday this year (that was careless, I hope Sunday is ok*). Some of the ideas for marking this sound quite fun, but something is niggling me. Looking around the families at our church, there's probably a minority headed up by married couples who are both church members. Some are families where only one parent is a Christian, other are single parent families, some are couples with children who aren't married. So if we did anything Valentiney in a main service, it would be deeply uncomfortable for a large section of the church, so much so that they might even stay away.

We'll be picking up on a theme of love and relationships in our cafe service this Sunday, but trying to approach it from an angle that everyone can engage* with. Can a church (or any community) with a mixed economy of family structure celebrate marriage without that being uncomfortable for some? We provide overt support for marriage through things like our marriage preparation course (which seems to be accumulating 2 new couples a week at the moment), does overt support for single parents just come across as patronising, or are their places where this works well?

Of course we could make it really uncomfortable, and re-enact the life of St. Valentine himself. The legend has it that he was a priest imprisoned under Roman emperor Claudius for secretly marrying Christian couples. According to Wikipedia "this priest was condemned to death. He was beaten with clubs and stoned; when that didn't finish him, he was beheaded outside the Flaminian Gate." That could make for an interesting act of worship....

*sorry

Everybody needs an Alastair Campbell

Here's Alastair Campbell on the Andrew Marr show yesterday, defending Tony Blair as he did at the Iraq inquiry a few weeks ago. The cynic might say that Campbell has got to defend Blair because his own reputation is so closely linked to Blairs. But if it's closely linked, then that's mostly Alastair Campbell's own doing.

I'm still not sure about the truth of the decision to go to war in Iraq, but whatever the truth, I'm very impressed by Campbell's loyalty to his former boss. What does it do for you, I wonder, to have someone who is so committed to you personally, that they will defend you 100% when it would be much easier to step away and hang you out to dry? It reminds me a bit of Paul and Barnabas in Acts, where Barnabas effectively sponsors Paul and sticks up for him, when it clearly wasn't easy for the early church to accept this former hit-man into their fellowship (Acts 9:26). Would Paul have got very far without the 'son of encouragement' standing alongside him?

A loyal friend is a great gift. Especially one who is so loyal to you that s/he will defend you to the hilt in public, even if they're telling you in private that you're wrong. One of the things we mention in marriage prep (currently running at our local) is the need to stick up for each other: it can be really corrosive to a relationship if couples make fun of one another or run each other down in front of others. It's tough when there might be in-laws wanting to carry on 'claiming' you as one of them, rather than letting the new husband and wife make their new family unit their prime loyalty. But the marriage pledges are a declaration of absolute loyalty to one another, and that means presenting a united front to the world.

Campbell has taken so many punches for Blair that it's not surprising he struggles a bit now and again. Another part of the Marr interview touched on the difficulties of living in the public eye and staying in touch with reality. I hope for his sake that Campbell has some good mates too.

Adultery Ads Axed

That was quick. Following a campaign launched a few days ago against the public advertising of 'marital affair', an agency which set people up for adulterous liasons, this message has just been posted on the Facebook campaign site:

STATEMENT FROM MARITALAFFAIR.CO.UK: “We have reviewed our advertising strategy and have instructed our agency to remove billboard ads from our current campaign in light of recent developments. We maintain that people have the right to chose their own lifestyle and that this site provides a safe and secure outlet for those who are considering this.”

This is awaiting confirmation (update: now confirmed), and we also need to make sure the ads actually come down. However I'm glad the company have had the decency to do what the Advertising Standards Agency wouldn't do. Their statement cries out for critique though: "People do have the right to choose their own lifestyle" but within what limits? Or none at all? What if my lifestyle included, say, vandalising advertising hoardings?

Well done to the campaigners, this is good news.

Advertising Adultery: Does the ASA care about your marriage?

It doesn't look like it. Dave Walker reports on an appalling company which promotes, and makes money out of, adultery. A complaint against one of their billboard adverts drew this response from the Advertising Standards Authority:

Complaints about offence often require difficult judgements but we don’t intervene where advertising is simply criticised for being in poor taste. Apart from freedom of speech considerations, even well-intentioned and thoughtful people will have different and sometimes contradictory opinions about what constitutes ‘bad taste’ or should be prohibited. We can only act if the ad, in our judgement, offends against widely accepted moral, social or cultural standards.

My emphasis. Are we really a nation which no longer finds adultery morally offensive? Is it now ok to make promises to one person, then have sex with someone else, without breaking any moral standard? Without wanting to turn into disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, I find this stomach churning, as will many people who've dealt with the fall-out of adultery and it's catastrophic effects on families, children and the adults involved. That some sick minded individuals want to turn a profit on this is bad enough, but then we already have plenty of people who profiteer from sin and no doubt we always will. But I really don't understand what the ASA are doing here.

Having said that, perhaps there was a straw in the wind last week. I've been following Kirsty Youngs series on the family on the Beeb: last week looked at the period from the late 60's to early 80's, and focused on sex. There was a cool, detached narrative on pornography, adultery, sexual promiscuity etc., without any noticeable moral judgment on any of it.

There's a Facebook group supporting the campaign against the adverts, which, if it attracts enough support, will demonstrate that ads like this do cause 'widespread offense'. Though of course, without the internet, most of us wouldn't have heard of it at all. There's a whole other discussion to be had on whether there's such a thing as 'local' anymore....

see also Maggi Dawn. Sadly the Times has a big cold slab of cynicism in the same vein as the advertisers, but hope is restored if you sort the comments by 'most recommended'.