[Senator Deirdre Clune and Church of Ireland’s Bishop of Cork Paul Colton at the launch of Cork LGBT Awareness Week in Cork Civic Offices yesterday]

Part of an address by the Rev Paul Colton, Church of Ireland Bishop of Cork, yesterday to launch Cork LGBT Awareness Week.

“There are many Christians, including myself, who believe that God’s justice, God’s love and the inclusiveness of God, must bear fruit in unqualified equality for gay and lesbian people too. As a friend, a gay priest in the UK said only this weekend:

Being gay is not a choice, it is my being, who and what I am as a person before God and though it does not define all that I am it is inseparable from my sense of self and of course from my faith.

Strangely, something that gives me hope – paradoxically – is the fact that almost from the start, Christians have been arguing among themselves about something or other. First the argument was about circumcision.

Since then the Christian story has been one of prejudice, injustice, labelling as ‘the other’ and failing to show Christ’s love, being overcome step by step: slaves, Jews, science, single mothers, children born outside marriage, people in interchurch marriages, victims of suicide, the downfall of apartheid, divorcees, women (first in decision-making in the Church and then in the ordained ministry); standing up to racism. Think in our own lifetime of how, arising from our sense of the love of Christ, our attitudes have changed in the Church to many of these people, issues and situations.

Awareness is the state or ability to perceive. If that is to happen we all need to be open to looking around – to seeing, hearing, listening and encountering, yes, but most especially, to take the risk of reaching out to understand, especially of reaching out to embrace people we think are different from us.

I want, therefore, to encourage especially those gay and lesbian people who are involved in church life, or who once were, to engage with the debates many churches are having at the current time. About an hour ago Shirley Temple Bar tweeted: ‘Sharing LGBT stories is an important step on the road to equality.’ I agree with that, and I ask you not to give up on religion and religious institutions.

It is essential that your voices and experiences are heard and listened to. More important, it is vital that you do not let people drive you away. The loving welcome and inclusion of you is not theirs to take away: that love, that inclusion, that welcome, that belonging are God’s gift – God’s grace – offered to you as much as to anyone else.

FIGHT!

Speech By Paul Colton (ChuchofIreland)

Picture: Diane Cusack