Post by clansmanchris on Aug 23, 2016 3:25:57 GMT -5
I was delighted to learn of British Olympian race-walker Tom Bosworth’s engagement to his long-term boyfriend Harry Dineley in Rio de Janeiro last week, just as I was to earlier learn of British Olympian boi-diver Tom Daley's engagement to his fiance Dustin Lance Black.
As an openly-gay Member of Tunbridge Wells United Reformed Church and a former Constituency Young Conservative Chairman (in England, UK), I was initially opposed to David Cameron legislating to permit same-sex marriage – believing that marriage should be a lifelong institution for a man and a woman in which to procreate children – and that Cameron’s motives had more to do with winning back the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered vote after a majority of Conservative MPs previously voted against reducing the age of consent for homosexual acts and for a ban on English local authorities promoting homosexuality as a normal way of life in schools.
However, I have since come to believe it to be both hypocritical and homophobic for fellow Christians to deny gay and lesbian couples the option of marrying one another when, at the same time, sanctioning the marriage of hitherto cohabiting heterosexual couples and heterosexual divorcees, which would appear to suggest that there should be one law for heterosexuals and another for homosexuals. This cannot be right. Throughout the United Kingdom (including Northern Ireland, which is currently the only part of the United Kingdom, where same-sex marriage is not permitted), consenting adults should be free to marry the person they love, irrespective of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity! Self-styled “Unionist” opponents of same-sex marriage in the DUP take note!
I pray that Tom B and Harry - and Tom D and Lance - will be blessed with good health, much happiness and growing prosperity together for many years to come; and counsel my fellow Christians who oppose same-sex marriage to reconsider their position (as I have), lest they deter LGBT people from attending church and, worse still, portray the Reformed Faith to be homophobic and transphobic which it is not.
As an openly-gay Member of Tunbridge Wells United Reformed Church and a former Constituency Young Conservative Chairman (in England, UK), I was initially opposed to David Cameron legislating to permit same-sex marriage – believing that marriage should be a lifelong institution for a man and a woman in which to procreate children – and that Cameron’s motives had more to do with winning back the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered vote after a majority of Conservative MPs previously voted against reducing the age of consent for homosexual acts and for a ban on English local authorities promoting homosexuality as a normal way of life in schools.
However, I have since come to believe it to be both hypocritical and homophobic for fellow Christians to deny gay and lesbian couples the option of marrying one another when, at the same time, sanctioning the marriage of hitherto cohabiting heterosexual couples and heterosexual divorcees, which would appear to suggest that there should be one law for heterosexuals and another for homosexuals. This cannot be right. Throughout the United Kingdom (including Northern Ireland, which is currently the only part of the United Kingdom, where same-sex marriage is not permitted), consenting adults should be free to marry the person they love, irrespective of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity! Self-styled “Unionist” opponents of same-sex marriage in the DUP take note!
I pray that Tom B and Harry - and Tom D and Lance - will be blessed with good health, much happiness and growing prosperity together for many years to come; and counsel my fellow Christians who oppose same-sex marriage to reconsider their position (as I have), lest they deter LGBT people from attending church and, worse still, portray the Reformed Faith to be homophobic and transphobic which it is not.