So says the Most Reverend Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, in a speech during the House of Lords debate on a same-sex marriage bill today, as the Telegraph reports - emphasis mine:
In his first major intervention in the debate, the Most Rev Justin Welby said he could not support David Cameron’s same-sex marriage Bill in its current form.
He warned that the reform “weakened” the concept of the “normal” family as the basis for a strong community and replaced traditional marriage with something “less good”. . . .
Speaking on the first day of debate on the Bill in the House of Lords, the Archbishop warned that legalising same sex marriages would be a social problem, not a faith issue.
“We think that traditional marriage is a cornerstone of society,” he told peers.
“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," he said.
“The concept of marriage as a normative place for procreation is lost; the idea as marriage as covenant is diminished; the family in its normal sense, predating the state, and as our base community of society, as we have already heard, is weakened.
“It is not at heart a faith issue,” he said. “It is about the general social good. So with much regret but entire conviction I cannot support the Bill as it stands.”
The Archbishop criticised the Bill for mistakenly treating marriages and weddings as the same thing. Gay couples can have equality without needing to be able to marry, he said. “Two things may be equal but different."
The Bill also fails to deliver equal rights for homosexuals because it distinguishes clearly between same-sex and opposite-sex 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 definition of marriage is “an awkward shape” with same-sex and opposite sex marriages “scrunched into it” but not fitting well, the Archbishop said.
The Lords debate follows an overwhelming vote [366-161] in favour of the Marriage (same sex couples) Bill in the Commons last month.
Full text here, thanks to Grandmere Mimi who tracked it down and shared it with me.
I will post more on the debate, with some fine contributions from noble lords in support of the bill, when news video is available.
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9 comments:
Thanks for the links, Russ. I found the text of the Archbishop of Canterbury's speech in the House of Lords. I missed his speech, but I have the replay on, but the talk is about other bills, and there is no fast-forward function.
Thanks for sending the link, which I have added to this article.
Some of the antigay comments by certain other noble lords are breathtakingly prehistoric, don't you think?
I must add, on the other hand, some of the progay comments - by all these straight people, one after another, imagine that! - are breathtaking too, but in a different way.
I agree. Some of the speeches in favor of the bill were lovely.
Marriage is a sacrament. Let them keep it. Make a distinction between marriage as defined by government and marriage as defined by religious organizations. Will that shut them up? Will that be the end of this debate? No. The will argue right up to the point that their homophobia is so obvious to the rest of the world that they will have inadvertently made our case - that this is a matter of civil rights - for us. - Uptonking from Wonderland Burlesque
Upton, the bill is to allow same-sex civil marriages. It's the entanglement of an established church with the state that puts bishops in the House of Lords, where today's debate is taking place and allows them to have a voice and a vote.
Mimi is quite right on this point: the presence of the bishops nothwithstanding, the bill is about civil marriage, not religious. The Government have in fact put a so-called "quadruple-lock" provision in the bill, whereby no churches can be forced to perform same-sex marriages against their beliefs.
I think the AbC is hanging on for dear life to his Evo brethren. It is senseless for him to be so worked up over civil marriage as Mimi points out. Next week he's off to see the pope... Ugh
Welby has destroyed whatever goodwill I felt towards him; see my comments in today's post.
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