THE BISHOPS of California and El Camino Real have issued guidelines to their clergy for conducting gay marriages.While issued as a result of the May 15 California Supreme Court ruling that struck down laws barring gay marriage, the pastoral letters of Bishops Marc Andrus and Mary Gray-Reeves are part of a widening campaign to normalize homosexuality within the Episcopal Church that last week also witnessed the long anticipated gay civil union ceremony of Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.
Nor will Archbishop Rowan Williams’ pleas that the gay agenda be left at home be honoured, as the “journey” for “full inclusion in our Church” of gays and lesbians will see the “the witness of our LGBT sisters and brothers to this summer's Lambeth Conference,” Bishop Andrus said on June 9.
Bishop Andrus wrote that the “Diocese of California seeks to provide, by advocacy and example, a way forward for The Episcopal Church so that the marriage of same-sex couples will be a part of our official marriage rites, without distinction.”
While there were no “canonical rites for same-sex marriage, it is our goal that all couples be treated equally by the Church, as they are equally loved by God,” he said.
Bishop Andrus asked that gay couples “first being married in a secular service” and then be “blessed in the Episcopal Church” using trial rites for same-sex blessings adopted by the diocese in 2007.
The clergy’s role in the service should be the “blessing portion of the marriage”, he noted, but added that he encouraged clergy to apply to become “Deputy Marriage Commissioners,” so as to be able to perform civil marriages for gay couples.
“I intend to volunteer for this at my earliest opportunity,” the bishop said, noting it would be “sign of affirmation for the Supreme Court ruling from our diocese.”
In the neighbouring Diocese of El Camino Real, Bishop Mary Gray-Reeves announced that same-sex couples may have a civil marriage in a parish church followed by a blessing of their union. Clergy are asked to confine their ministrations to the blessings portion of the service, deputizing the marriage to a civil registrar. “As the national church proceeds toward full sacramental inclusion, so shall our diocese,” Bishop Gray-Reeves wrote.
The model of a church-based mixed civil-religious ceremony was employed at Bishop Gene Robinson’s June 7 civil union at St Paul’s Episcopal Church in Concord, New Hampshire.
Performed on the fifth anniversary of his election as Bishop of New Hampshire, a press spokesman said the exact date and location of the ceremony of the otherwise highly publicized ceremony was kept private out of deference to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the forthcoming Lambeth Conference.
While New Hampshire has permitted civil unions since Jan 1, 2008, last month Bishop Robinson told an American television programme he had decided to have a civil union ceremony after he received death threats about his decision to attend the Lambeth Conference.
"I am simply not going to put my life in jeopardy without putting into place the protections for my beloved partner and my children and my grandchildren that are offered to me in a civil union," he said.
Bishop Robinson has often spoken of the death threats he says has received, and stated he wore a bullet-proof vest during his consecration ceremony.
No arrests have been made in connection with the threats reported by Bishop Robinson, however.
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