The Anglican Journal conducted interviews after the vote.
Predictably, Peter Elliott, a partnered homosexual from the Diocese of New Westminster, was “happy”:
“very happy to see this small step, an important step being taken.” Elliott acknowledged that the resolution could reopen wounds over the issue of same-sex blessings that have daunted the church in the last decade. But, “it is also continuing in the healing process for some of the wounds that have been there for a long time,” said Elliott. “Nobody has the monopoly on pain. Gay and lesbian people in the life of the church have for some decades been second-class citizens…I think it is a word of healing for those of us who are gay.”
As Elliott says, “Nobody has the monopoly on pain’. What he doesn’t say is that Anglicans who are resisting the temptations of same-sex attraction because they believe succumbing to them would be wrong, will be hurt by this resolution. It seems that their pain doesn’t count because, presumably, in Elliot’s world, they don’t count.
Gene Packwood noticed what, to the un-blinkered, was apparent all along: no matter how strenuous the denials, same-sex blessings in the ACoC were always intended to be a prelude to same-sex marriage, making the liberal Anglican hierocracy little better than a coterie of con artists:
Canon Gene Packwood, a clergy delegate from the diocese of Calgary, said same-sex marriage “was the intent all along. I think folks who are in favour of this were using same-sex blessings to try in the interim to gain ground. I’m not accusing them of being devious, but that was what the strategy was.”
Sue Moxley pointed out another obvious inconsistency in the ACoC’s willingness to bless what it is unwilling to do:
Bishop Sue Moxley, diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, expressed support for the motion. “There’s an interesting dynamic: that people can get their head around blessing a couple but not get their head around marriage,” she said. “For me, that doesn’t make sense because for me a blessing is what a wedding in a church is about.”
Gene Packwood went on to point out that changing the marriage canon in this way will further alienate most of the world’s Anglicans, drive yet more people out of the ACoC, decrease the church’s revenues and further hasten its demise – demonstrating once again the old saw: those whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad:
Packwood, who believes that same-sex marriage is “manifestly contrary to the teaching of scripture and the liturgy of the church,” also expressed concern about the resolution’s effect on the Anglican Church of Canada’s standing in the Anglican Communion worldwide. “We’re not in communion with the majority of Anglicans…because they think we’ve gone so far and that’s even without making a decision,” he said. “If we go and change the marriage canon, then that’s really going to draw the line and that won’t be helpful to our spiritual health or our finances.”
