THE SHACKING UP QUANDRY

from Midwest Conservative Journal by The Editor

In the State of New York, homosexual “marriage” recently became legal. The Episcopal Organization there enthusiastically supported this new law but now finds itself with a rather interesting problem.

During the debates of 2003 through 2009, TEO prattled on and on about blessing “committed, long-term relationships.” Anyone who knows anything about Episcopalians knows that they don’t care and have never cared how “committed” or “long-term” anyone’s relationship is or twice-divorced-and-thrice-married Barry “Third Time’s the Charm” Beisner would never have gotten a pointy hat.

Still, TEO ran all that smack and in New York, anyway, they now have to back it up or smartass bigot bloggers like me will call them on it. Now there are quite a number of homosexual Episcopal clergy and some of them even live with other homosexuals. What to do about it? Simple.

Shotgun marriages.

Long Island Bishop Lawrence Provenzano recently informed his gay clergy that they had nine months to inform the Diocese where they were registered or somebody’s going to have to hit the bricks.

For the gay and lesbian clergy of this Diocese who are living in domestic partnerships or civil unions, I hereby grant a grace period of nine months from the effective date of the New York State Law permitting same-gender marriages for those relationships to be regularized either by the exchange of vows in marriage or the living apart of said couples. I deem it to be honest and fair, and I do so direct and require, now that it is legal, that only married couples may live together, either in rectories or elsewhere as a clergy couple living in the midst of our faith community.

You have to give Larry Pro this much. Dude’s consistent.

Provenzano told Episcopal News Service in a telephone interview July 11 that after he consulted with the leadership of the diocese “it was clear that the consensus of thinking was that there ought to be some time frame” on fulfilling his requirement. “If we left it completely open-ended, it might not be acted on” and that inaction would create a “disparity,” he said, noting that he would not allow a heterosexual clergy couple to live together outside of marriage.

Although he didn’t put a time frame on it, New York Bishop Mark Sisk agrees. Not going to give you a deadline yet. But at some point, says Sisk, you two are going to have to make honest fill-in-the-blanks out of each other.

Further, in the spirit of the opportunity provided by this new law, it is my expectation that all those who are currently living in committed relationships, will, in due course, have those relationships formalized by the state of New York. This is an especially high priority for clergy who have vowed to “pattern (our) live(s) in accordance with the teachings of Christ, so that (we) may be (a) wholesome example(s) to all people.”

Not everybody agrees with this idea. John Chane, the retiring Bishop of Washington, DC, thinks that ordering people to get married is wrong.

Chane told ENS in a telephone interview July 11 that he would “never, ever” require priests in his diocese who live in same-gender relationships to marry unless they wanted to.

Why? Octillions of years of heterosexual oppression or something.

To do so, he said, misses the fact that civil authorities have denied “basic human rights and privileges” to same-gender couples for years and now “it’s almost as if the straight community is once again telling gay people what they ought to do and I find that really somewhat troublesome.”

Dear LORD, I’m going to miss you, big man. Do an Ed Browning and say something stupid a couple of times a year, will you? For old time’s sake? Up Bawstun way, Massachusetts is okay with the general concept but isn’t down with the time limit idea.

The Rev. Canon Mally Lloyd, Diocese of Massachusetts canon to the ordinary, said in a comment e-mailed to ENS July 11 that “in general the bishops’ practice during this time of transition and change has been to treat situations with pastoral care whenever possible because the fact that marriage is now legal for gay and lesbian people is a quantum shift in identity and possibility for many of them, and to put a timeline on a couple’s readiness for the sacramental rite of marriage when that has never been available to them before seems arbitrary and unpastoral.”

While Connecticut, which has had a policy in place for a while, doesn’t allow your significant other to live in the rectory unless the two of you have officially tied the knot.

The Diocese of Connecticut has no written policy on marriage for clergy living in same-gender relationships, according to the Rev. Canon Erick Larsen, canon for transition ministry. However, when the state passed first a civil-union bill and later a same-gender marriage law, then-diocesan Bishop Andrew Smith expected gay and lesbian clergy to live with the same sort of fidelity and commitment that was expected of heterosexual clergy, Larsen said.

I think I’ve mentioned here more than once that I can’t remember a single sermon back at my old Episcopal joint about the evils of adultery or the moral benefits of keeping the ol’ one-eyed trouser snake in your pants until the girl said, “I do.” The place would have emptied pretty quickly, if you know what I mean.

So have the Episcopalians finally changed their tune? Will fidelity finally become TEO’s standard for relationships, heterosexual or otherwise?

Don’t be silly. They have to take this stance because they have no other option. Because if the Episcopalians do right now what they’re eventually going to do (let homosexuals decide what homosexual marriage means), then everyone should finally figure out that they were lying all along.

Not that most intelligent people don’t know that right now, of course.