The results disseminated through Twitter seconds ahead of the live stream. My friend looked at their phone “Oh fuck – Connor says ‘I’m sorry’.” A young adult in the room with us started to cry. The video feed caught up. We heard weeping over the computer speakers from the youth at General Synod.
Though 80% of laity, and 73% of clergy had approved the changes to the marriage canon to recognize same-sex marriage in the Anglican church, the 66% threshold required of the bishops had failed by two votes.
My mind darted to the queer and trans youth who had gone up during the preceding debate to plead their worth in a display of great vulnerability. I thought of the older people who followed them, never recognizing the youth as one of their own or their words as worthy of contemplation. They began with pronouncements of “we welcome GTBL people but…” and went on to cite ex-gays and angrily claiming the injustice of the dwindling appetite for their message of exclusion.
These are the voices the vote favoured. Not the youth. Not the pastor who shared the collateral damage of such exclusion when he had to explain to his young child why his husband wasn’t welcome at the Lambeth Conference like all the other parents.
A comforting hand came to mine, but to be honest, I was fine. I was habituated to hearing grown men and women demean people like me and witnessing that kind of ignorance prevail time after time. What I wasn’t used to was the anguish of the young queers whose hearts had yet to be covered with emotional scars. Their pain from this rejection was palpable. For some of them, same-sex marriage had been legal in Canada since before they were born. This wasn’t some theological exercise that had emerged in their later years. It was a vote about their worth in a debate that had gone on their entire existence.
This was not the answer they deserved.
For those fourteen bishops who voted against this canonical amendment, this may well have been a Pyrrhic victory. That same-sex marriages went ahead across diocese in this land three years ago gave hope in the midst of grief. But those tremendously important gestures are being eclipsed by this conclusion. The message it sends is amplified by the homophobia and transphobia that is so prominent in other Christian denominations as well as evidently our own.
As Noah Hermes wrote on Twitter:
I just keep thinking, I wonder if these Bishops who voted no are the ones who are constantly complaining about church growth? About lack of young people in their pews? About how we need to evangelize more? Well bishops, you had your chance here and you blew it.
I have the privilege of being involved in young adult and LGBTQ ministries, and young people don’t want to go to a church where they can’t bring their queer friend. Queer people have been traumatized at the hands of the church and yearning for a spiritual home.
Because though this is just a decision about marriage, and individual dioceses can still bless same sex unions, making a decision like this tells LGBTQ people that we are not welcome, by not including us in every aspect of ministry you are telling us we are less than.
U want ur church to live? Great! Bc I know queers who are more devout, caring, and committed to living out the gospel than most str8 Christians! But guess what they can’t come to church because they’re too traumatized by this institution that constantly invalidates them.
I conclude with the words of one of the queer and trans youth that spoke at General Synod before the vote took place:
We have been called in countless passages of the Bible to love one another as God has loved us: unconditionally. Not the type of love that includes a but or if like how my cousin said that she would love me if I went to conversion therapy. Yeah that’s not love. Love is simply I love you. Period.
…
How can we claim to love our neighbour by denying them the right to one of our greatest sacraments. The answer is that we can’t. We have a choice today to peel off old bark, as trees do, to grow into something beautiful and new, or to remain in our old traditions that contribute to the marginalization and oppression of people in our community and around the world.
We will not have unity in our church as long as we marginalize and oppress a large group of Christians. Nobody should ever feel unsafe or scared to come to a place of worship. No one should feel unsafe to come to a place of worship.
To my LGBTQ2+ siblings and family,
Remember that we are created in the image and the likeness of God, and no matter what happens tonight, we are all beloved children of God and I hope that today our love will be affirmed by the churches we call home.
Thank you.
Addendum: I wanted to speak to the pain of the youth who participated in Synod in this article. However, here’s a thing to note through this same vote – more Anglican laity (80%) and roughly as many Anglican clergy (73%) supported same-sex marriage than Canadians as a whole (74%). Even the bishops’ 62% support is ahead of where Canadians as a whole were at in 2005 (42%).