THE CHURCHES should welcome and support civil partnership legislation rather than try to push those who will benefit from it further to the margins, a meeting of the Church of Ireland Changing Attitude Ireland (CAI) group was told in Dublin at the weekend.CAI secretary Rev Mervyn Kingston said at a meeting in TCD that the opposition of Catholic Primate Cardinal Seán Brady to the Civil Partnership Bill “helps to make the churches a less welcoming place for gay and lesbian Christians”.
In Northern Ireland such legislation had provided “essential legal protection for lesbian and gay couples, and the Irish Government should not be offering a weaker version in the Republic if it is to live up to its commitment to equivalent rights under the Good Friday agreement”, he said.
Following Saturday’s meeting a Holy Communion service was held in the chapel at TCD, during which the late Stephen Gately and his civil partner Andrew Cowles were remembered in prayers.
In a sermon at the chapel yesterday Rev Sharon Ferguson, of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement and a minister at the Metropolitan Community Church in London, said “those who are called by God to be our religious leaders are exhorted to remember that they are no different from the rest of us and consequently deal gently with all people”.
She said: “Jesus spent his whole ministry reaching out to those rejected by the Jewish faith – lepers, tax collectors, women, gentiles, the sick and disabled, prostitutes – and he showed God’s all encompassing love for all people.
“He didn’t judge them and insist that they changed their ways before sharing God’s love with them, for he knew that none of these things matter.”
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