Summerskill on C of E

While I have reservations on the way Stonewall operate, with their tendency to go solo (not including other community/militant groups) or to claim sole credit for results the achievment to which they have only contributed, I have to say that what follows, taken from their latest newsletter, gets my vote:

MESSAGE FROM BEN SUMMERSKILL, chief executive

The Times was once regarded as the top people's paper. That accolade is now held, of course, by Heat magazine. But it remains compelling how many people in power are still prepared to talk to the paper. And they often seem tempted to say things they clearly don't think will be subject to public scrutiny, as if they were sharing an offensive opinion in the bar of a London gentlemen's club.

Just three months ago, the Archbishop of Westminster disingenuously told The Times that he didn't believe in discriminating against homosexuals. Four days later the upstart Mail on Sunday revealed that the Archbishop had, in fact, recently summoned in one of his press officers and sacked him on the spot just for being gay.

Last weekend, a representative of the Church Commissioners - the people in charge of the Church of England's assets - wrote to The Times. His demand? That more public money should be provided to support church buildings "that act as hubs for social cohesion and community care". Perhaps the Church Commissioners have forgotten that it's only two months since the C of E wrote to Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly demanding permission to exclude gay people from "counselling, accommodation and day-care" provided on their premises when our new "goods and services" protections are introduced in the next few months.

But the Church of England can't have it both ways. If it wants millions of pounds of public subsidy to keep its premises intact on the grounds that they're there for the community, it should be required to make those premises available to all.

Tags: Stonewall, Church of England, gay, LGBT, GLBT, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, religion, community, homophobia, gay rights.

Comments

A Short History of the Elephant and Castle and Its Name

Last night I attended a lecture by local historian Stephen Humphrey who discussed the general history of the Elephant & Castle, focussing more particularly on what he called its heyday (between 1850 and 1940). This is part of a week-long art project ( The Elephant Project ) hosted in an empty unit on the first floor of the infamous shopping centre, aiming to chart some of the changes currently happening to the area. When an historian starts talking about the Elephant and Castle, there is one subject he can not possibly avoid, even if he wanted to. Indeed my unsuspecting announcement on Facebook that I was attending such talk prompted a few people to ask the dreaded question: Where does the name of the area come from, for realz? Panoramic view of the Elephant and Castle around 1960/61. Those of us less badly informed than the rest have long discarded the theory that the name comes from the linguistic deformation of "Infanta de Castille", a name which would have become at...

pink sauce | life, with a pink seasoning

As of tonight, my blog Aimless Ramblings of Zefrog , that "place where I can vent my frustration, express ideas and generally open my big gob without bothering too many people" which will be 6 in a couple of months, becomes Pink Sauce . While the URLs zefrog.blogspot.com and www.zefrog.eu are still valid to access this page, the main URL now becomes www.pinksauce.co.uk. There is a vague plan to create a proper website for www.zefrog.eu to which the blog would be linked. Why Pink Sauce , you may ask. It is both simple and complicated. For several years, I have grown out of love for the name of the blog. It felt a bit cumbersome and clumsy. That said, I never really looked into changing it, seriously. Tonight, for dinner, I had pasta with a special pink sauce of my concoction ; single cream and ketchup. I know most people while feel nauseous at the very though of the mixture but trust me, it's gorgeous. Don't knock it till you've tried it. After having had my platte...

Tick, Tick... BOOM! - review

Tick, Tick... BOOM! (by and on Netflix), titled after one of its hero's musicals, is the film directorial debut of Lin-Manuel Miranda, the acclaimed creator of Hamilton . Perhaps appropriately, it is about musical theatre and, itself, turns into a musical; covering the few days, in early 1990, leading to star-crossed composer Jonathan Larson's 30 birthday. At that time, Larson, who went on to write Rent , was in the throes of completing his first musical, on which he had been working for eight years, before a crucial showcase in front major players in the industry. With social puritanism and the AIDS epidemic as background – with close friends getting infected, or sick; some of them dying, Larson, a straight man, struggles to write a final key song for his show, while confronting existential questions about creativity, his life choices, and his priorities. The film features numerous examples of Larson's work meshed into the narrative of those few days. Some are part o...

Pink Sauce

Search This Blog