9/06/2008

Riazat Butt launches a gay fast

Over on Thinking Anglicans you can find a copy of Riazat Butt's most recent article for the Church of England Newspaper. "My time of abstinence" is a great read from the religious correspondent for the Guardian. Great stuff. Still, Ramadan is a month, and a long time to hold off using the word "gay" and "bishop" in the same sentence, much less the same article. The Guardian may have need of Ms Butt's remarkable writing abilities before the next moon.

At the center of her article was this comment, "I was minded of how bizarre the obsession with gay sex must look to the outside world when I spotted the excellent Stonewall poster — “Some people are gay. Get over it” — on the westbound District line service to Blackfriars. I am thinking of bulk ordering these t-shirts for my Fleet Street colleagues, bishops and archbishops. I am so over gay sex. Alas, the combination of gay bishops and journalists is a bit like competitive dieting. You see other people doing it, so you have to as well. Nobody wants to be the fat one in the photo."

Go read it. And perhaps, even if we can't completely join her, at least we could cut back or even better focus on what is really going on in Anglican-Land. The realignment invaders claim that this is not really about gay anything, but about the faith once delivered, etc. OK, great. So let's talk about matters related to the true faith crowd. The issues in Anglican-Land may look like they are about the true faith once delivered, etc, but they end up being about purity and power. That is because the true faith crowd is at least as duplicitous as they claim the awful progressives to be. That gives us plenty to talk about.

7 comments:

  1. It is a very good article, and turns the head away from the "bright shiny objects" occupying our church toward some questions and concerns about Islam in England.
    I appreciate her desire for such a fast. And I bet if you were to ask "the gay bishop", he'd likely tell you he's much more interested in discussing "the Good News" rather than "the gay news". Those of us who are gay people of faith can sometimes get a little tired of the request that we always discuss something that, for us, is asked and answered, your honor.
    As the poster says, some of us are gay. Get over it!
    Thanks for sharing the post.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hmmm. The choice always seems to be:

    1. Fixate on "gay sex," or
    2. Talk about something important.


    Except that the real issue is: gay people. Human beings, and the way the Church treats us as nonenties and nobodies, and tries to destroy us.

    The issue here is the Church and its many and various infantile problems - one of which is that it talks about human beings as if they were objects.

    And I've launched a big-time fast on bothering with that topic, believe me....

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  3. This has never been about sex -- though that is the "bright shiny object". It is about power, money and control -- there is a woman that has the power, the money and the control and it infuriates those like Schofield, Duncan, Iker, Akinola, Orambi, Jensen, and Venables. She has broken into the sacred walls of the "brotherhood of priests". These folks use the only thing that will get many of the "orthodox" laity of their flat **s. But make no mistake this is about a woman in a position to tell old white men what to do. The insanity of it all is that she has done none of what she is accused of doing.

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  4. (Dan)
    Pure nonsense Fred. The bishops to whom you refer had the same problems with PB Griswold and with AB Hilfitz of Canada (hope I got his name right). To make this into an anti-woman conspiracy is pure nonsense.

    ReplyDelete
  5. You are all, obviously, gentle angry people who are fighting, fighting for your lives.
    Best of luck in getting that condo in Provincetown!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Said the accountant from Connecticut.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Has Ms Butt commented on the issue with regard to her own religion?

    If not, why not?

    ReplyDelete

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