Church Of England: And Not One Fuck Was Given

The Guardian.

Church News: You Sexy Dancer!

The Londoner, thumbing the Rev Richard Coles’s autobiography, found an intriguing passage about
his days with The Communards. “Wherever we went,” Coles writes, “Jimmy [Somerville] was fêted by the gay community... in venues like the Nightingale in Birmingham or Rockshots in Newcastle, friendly, with go-go dancers in cages, one of whom I discovered years later was the Rev Giles Fraser, Canon of St Paul’s.”

Surely not! Intrigued, we pinged the open-minded Fraser pinged an email asking if he was a dancer. “Yep, I think I spent more time in Rockshots than I did in lectures when I was at university in Newcastle,” he recalled. “Did I dance in a cage? I can’t remember but I certainly wore some strange kit: bleached blond flat-top and a M&S plastic bag one night, I seem to remember. They were great days.”

The Londoner is jealous. It’s been years since we danced in a cage.

Londoners' Diary, Evening Standard.

From last week, but only found by Fagburn during his recent sojourn to London. ^^^

And to think, some laugh at me for picking days-old newspapers off the floor and reading them!

And from a similarly yellowing Times' Diary...

Chris Bryant, the vicar turned MP, was talking to one of the TMS lackeys at the launch of Fathomless Riches, the memoir of the Rev Richard Coles, the pop star turned vicar, when out of nowhere during a chat about politics he named a famous gay actor and said: “I don’t think I’ve had sex with him.” My chap was nonplussed at the non sequitur but Bryant continued: “He says we’ve had sex in Clapham. I’m fairly certain I’ve never had sex south of the river.” Makes him sound like a carnal cabbie.

O-kay...

PS Other ex-members of The Communards are available.

Uganda: Googling Gay Porn?

Last year, Google published statistics about the places in the world where their search engine was most used to find gay porn sites. The results were extraordinary. According to its figures, Uganda is third on the list of counties where "man fucking man" is most searched for, behind Kenya and Pakistan, both of which are countries where homosexuality is illegal. These figures also demonstrate a high degree of correlation between places of conservative religious practice and internet searches for gay porn...

The Guardian.

But who would Google the bizarre term "man fucking man"?

If you actually Googled the more obvious "gay porn" the world looks rather different.

And less than 7% of Ugandans have internet access anyway.

Oh, and people speak 40 other languages apart from English.

So what is your point?

Thought For The Day: Rev Giles Fraser

Hope, then, is the defiance of love, defiance against what can feel like a bleak reality. It is built on the promise that love is stronger than death. And because of this, there is nothing of which we need to be afraid. Not fundamentally.
This is the good news of Easter – which is why it’s so ridiculous that former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey has used his own Easter message to continue his peculiar obsession with gay sex.
It is hardly earth-shattering good news if we reduce the Resurrection of Jesus Christ to some narrow moralism that seeks to police how people love each other.
In his attack on David Cameron, Lord Carey accused the Prime Minister of doing more than any recent political leader to feed the anxieties of those Christians who feel part of ‘a persecuted minority’.
To speak of Christians being persecuted in this country is an insult to those people in places such as Iran and Pakistan who really are...

Rev Giles Fraser, the former Canon Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral, writing in the Mail On Sunday. 
A decent fellow, and a reminder that all Christian leaders aren't antediluvian mean-spirited unchristian bigots.

MORE than two-thirds of the public think the Church of England is out of touch with society and more than half believe it does a bad job of providing moral leadership, according to a new poll.
The YouGov survey, commissioned by The Sunday Times for Easter, also finds that four out of 10 people think priests — both Anglican and Roman Catholic — cannot be trusted to tell the truth.
The findings give an indication of the size of the challenge facing Justin Welby, who will deliver his first Easter message as Archbishop of Canterbury today.
Only 19% of respondents said they could name Welby, the leader of the world’s 80m Anglicans...
The church has been at the centre of several recent controversies, including a refusal to ordain women bishops and a rejection of same-sex marriage, a policy championed by David Cameron.
The YouGov poll shows that 49% of the public say the church is wrong to oppose such unions. Some 37% of people agree with its position on the issue. More than three-quarters (78%) think the church should allow women bishops...

The Sunday Times. 

Oh well, it was nasty nice while it lasted...

The Guardian: Letter Of The Week

Can I suggest that the Guardian stops putting the doings of the Church of England on its front page (Ruling that gay clergy can be bishops reignites church feud, 5 January)? Giving them the oxygen of publicity will only reinforce their idea that they remain relevant. Having insulted the entire female population over the issue of women bishops, they now do the same to the gay community by condescendingly agreeing to give them a measure of equality, but only as long as they don't actually engage in their disgusting version of the act of love. On both these issues, the church will bleat that, underneath its apparent misogyny, homophobia and general bigotry, real progress is being made towards enlightenment. Of course, this enlightenment is theirs not ours, as most of us moved way beyond them decades ago. So please, can you print their next cock-up (if you'll excuse the expression) on a much later page? Near the obituaries, perhaps?
Alan Clark
London

The Guardian.

The Guardian also published today a thoughtful and witty piece on this "ludicrous" hoohah by Giles Fraser, the former canon of St Paul's Cathedral of Occupy-supporting fame - Why Gay Bishops Have To Lie. 
Giles, along with the Rev Richard Coles and the late Oscar Romero are a good argument that maybe not all Christians are mad, and some are quite humane.
Further breaking with convention it's also illustrated online with the above photo featuring some of your actual gay men's faces.
Will wonders never cease?

Tweet For The Day: Rev Giles Fraser

Canon Giles Fraser - Dean of Southwark, and former Dean of St Paul's - on Twitter.

Marriage: Revolting

'So how is disgust supposed to relate to moral harm? Because it is perceived to be an indicator of what is bad. Most who study disgust give it an evolutionary function. Disgust represents a fear of contamination. And a great many traditional social boundaries and taboos exist as a way of protecting against contamination. The anthropologist Mary Douglas famously argued that the desire for purity and cleanliness is all about organising offensive things into acceptable social spaces – a place for everything and everything in its place. But the problem with a moral instinct that's all about policing the social boundaries created by disgust is that the sources of disgust are often the very same things that make us human. Cardinal O'Brien, for instance, is filled with disgust at the thought of gay sex. Which is why he is so intent on maintaining the boundaries of traditional marriage. But what a great many of us see in the Catholic church's response to homosexuality is simply a refusal of love itself – more specifically, love in all its sticky, squelchy reality...'

Dr Giles Fraser, the former canon chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral, writing in The Guardian on the politics of revulsion, and drawing a link between opposition to the Occupy movement and the anti-gay marriage brigade.
(Also the subject of a Guardian editorial today).
And the Rev Richard Coles, the former Communard, wrote this - 'The God-given dignity to which the Cardinal is blind' - in The Independent on Monday.
So I guess them Christians ain't all bad.

• Meanwhile over at the Daily Mail it's still bobbins o'clock. I think this writer's correct in saying that hardly anyone gives a hoot about gay marriage - so why does the press devote so much space to it? And so why not bring it in?

Occupy St Paul's: Friend Or Foe

Revd Giles Fraser, Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral, resigned today because of the church's plans to evict Occupy London protesters camped outside.
Being a thoroughly modern vicar Giles announced it on Twitter.
"It is with great regret and sadness that I have handed in my notice at St Paul's Cathedral."
He told The Guardian; "I cannot support using violence to ask people to clear off the land. It is not about my sympathies or what I believe about the camp. I support the right to protest and in a perfect world we could have negotiated. But our legal advice was that this would have implied consent... The church cannot answer peaceful protest with violence."
Fagburn likes Giles Fraser.
Amongst his many good works, he is the founder and president of Inclusive Church;
"We call on our Church to live out the promise of the Gospel; to celebrate the diverse gifts of all members of the body of Christ; and in the ordering of our common life to open the ministries of deacon, priest and bishop to those so called to serve by God, regardless of their sex, race or sexual orientation."
(He's straight, since you're wondering).
Giles is a regular contributor to The Guardian.
Here is a piece on the Church of England and gay marriage; 500 Years Of Intolerance.
Of course not all his fellow churchmen agree with Giles Fraser.
On The Daily Mail's website Revd Peter Mullen writes; "The Bishop of London is quite right to say that the protesters should move on. It is a pity that he did not add the admonition to both them and to his Dean and Canons to grow up."
Revd Peter Mullen writes a lot for The Daily Mail, and is the Mail's go-to guy when they want a stupid quote from a reactionary cleric.
How reactionary?
In 2008, Mullen blogged;
"Let us make it obligatory for homosexuals to have their backsides tattooed with the slogan SODOMY CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH.
"In addition, the obscene 'gay pride' parades and carnivals should be banned for they give rise to passive corruption, comparable to passive smoking. Young people forced to witness these excrescences are corrupted by them."
Which was nice.
Who do you think Jesus would support?