Scottish Green MSP Maggie Chapman on @LBC just now said that for the UK Government "even to threaten to act is entirely inappropriate" and they would be "playing roughshod with devolution". #GRRBill
She said she couldn't possibly know what sex she was because she had never had her chromosomes tested..
Scottish Green MSP Maggie Chapman on @LBC just now said that for the UK Government "even to threaten to act is entirely inappropriate" and they would be "playing roughshod with devolution". #GRRBill
She said she couldn't possibly know what sex she was because she had never had her chromosomes tested..
I think everyone's overlooking the obvious. This isn't about transgender rights. That's not something Sturgeon cares about, as far as can be judged. This is about shoring up her political base on one hand, while daring the UK Parliament to overrule her for exceeding her powers so she can claim to be being victimised.
Meanwhile, precisely because she's acting as though she's President of Scotland, Westminster is looking for an excuse to slap her down and remind her she isn't.
The irony that it's over something as tangential as this is probably more apparent than real. If anyone took this subject especially seriously they would have thrashed it out in advance to ensure this didn't happen.
Scottish Green MSP Maggie Chapman on @LBC just now said that for the UK Government "even to threaten to act is entirely inappropriate" and they would be "playing roughshod with devolution". #GRRBill
She said she couldn't possibly know what sex she was because she had never had her chromosomes tested..
In any case I think her description of the UK gov reaction is a bit misplaced. It hasn't been used before apparently, but the power to do this was it seems built into the Act which set up the devolution arrangements, so it cannot possibly be playing 'roughshod with devolution', it would be an established procedure of devolution, albeit not taken up. Like how if a treaty allows for arbitration over a matter its not violating it to use such a provision, even if it is a bad idea.
Saying it is an inappropriate and political use of devolution procedures makes more sense than claiming it rides roughshod with them.
Scottish Green MSP Maggie Chapman on @LBC just now said that for the UK Government "even to threaten to act is entirely inappropriate" and they would be "playing roughshod with devolution". #GRRBill
She said she couldn't possibly know what sex she was because she had never had her chromosomes tested..
Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the Scottish Bill it was agreed in parliament there and for Westminster to use a section 35 order to block it is outrageous .
Scottish Green MSP Maggie Chapman on @LBC just now said that for the UK Government "even to threaten to act is entirely inappropriate" and they would be "playing roughshod with devolution". #GRRBill
She said she couldn't possibly know what sex she was because she had never had her chromosomes tested..
In any case I think her description of the UK gov reaction is a bit misplaced. It hasn't been used before apparently, but the power to do this was it seens built into the Act which set up the devolution arrangements, so it cannot possibly be playing 'roughshod with devolution', it would be an established procedure. Like how if a treaty allows for arbitration over a matter its not violating it to use such a provision.
Saying it is an inappropriate and political use of devolution procedures makes more sense than claiming it rides roughshod with them.
If Holyrood are passing bills they are not competent to pass, then it's only right they be reminded they don't have the power to do that.
That's not riding roughshod over the devolutionary settlement, it's upholding it.
Of course, whether the government does have the power in this case is another question and I assume will end up before the courts (again).
Meanwhile the Scottish health and education services continue to struggle and Glasgow and Dundee continue to be bracketed among the most dangerous cities in Europe to live in outside actual war zones.
Bit of a nailbiter there. Given the current atmosphere that this is a moment for striking, I do wonder what could push the turnout any higher.
Tricky. A lot of teachers only join a union to get access to professional insurance and legal support if their head decides they don't like they way they teach. In a lot of fields, they simply wouldn't be union members.
(There's also something odd with a set of rules where not voting can be more effective opposition than voting against. Had the 9.6% NEU voters sat on their hands instead, the ballot would have failed to pass the turnout rule.)
Talking of which:
Also breaking: NAHTnews ballot has not reached turnout threshold
In England 64% of those who voted supported strikes, while 87% voted in favour of action short of a strike.
Look at the stats. Andz think if your statement makes sense.
If you think that the London teachers are (a) so frequent and (b) so much better paid as to bring the average to 102K then maybe you are counting to a different base. Base 7 and a half, perhaps?
Plus you're flat wrong about the 400K. Read your source again.
Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the Scottish Bill it was agreed in parliament there and for Westminster to use a section 35 order to block it is outrageous .
But that is the only way in which a section 35 order can be used, so are you saying section 35 should be repealed? In which case there would surely be de facto independence?
Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the Scottish Bill it was agreed in parliament there and for Westminster to use a section 35 order to block it is outrageous .
I'm not sure I do quite agree. I think the use of it in this instance may be outrageous, but it would seem that a power was deliberately left in to allow for at least some situation where it was theoretically deemed approrpriate.
That would clearly need to be a very high bar, one that has never before been reached and despite the cases made by opponents I don't think that bar has been reached, and therefore the decision of the Scottish Parliament should prevail (just as they should be granted a referendum, because the elected Parliament for Scotland has voted for one), but I think it remains a case of judging whether the use of such a provision is necessary (not simply reasonable) in some way, since so long as there is a UK state, a carve out for the UK government for some extreme situation seems like a safeguard that should be there. If there is no reason to ever say no even in theory to the Scottish parliament it really should just be independent.
Which, of course, even some on the fence will probably feel about this particular decision. Which I'd understand, I don't think the government can defend this decision as a uniquely justifying measure for an action they have never undertaken before. I just feel that ruling out the possibility such a decision could be appropriate, by saying it would outrageous in all circumstances, in effect, goes one smidge too far.
Penny Mordaunt has urged Church of England bishops to allow gay marriage ahead of their historic vote, marking the first intervention by a cabinet minister on the issue.
Ms Mordaunt, Leader of the House of Commons and MP for Portsmouth North, has written to the Bishop of Portsmouth, calling on him to to “recognize the pain and trauma” that failure to recognise same-sex marriage causes to “many LGBT+ people who are left feeling that they are treated as second class citizens within our society”.
Currently, according to canon law, no Church of England minister can bless or marry gay couples. Ms Mordaunt’s interjection marks the first time that a serving cabinet secretary has called for the issue to be reformed within the Church of England. She also warned that if bishops failed to approve same-sex marriage, the issue would only “fester and detract” from any positive contribution from the institution.
Her comments also come as next month, bishops will present their long-awaited findings to the General Synod – the Church’s legislative body – on whether the ban on gay marriage could be overturned.
Given a 2/3 majority for major change is needed in the House of Bishops, House of Clergy and House of Laity, I doubt there will be drastic change at Synod next month.
Evangelicals will block full endorsement of homosexual marriage and liberals will block retaining only a biblical Old Testament, Pauline view of marriage as between a man and woman.
So as with women priests or divorcee marriage I expect a fudge.
Church of England priests who want to bless same sex couples marriages will be able to, those who don't won't be forced to.
There may even be more flying Bishops in the Church of England as there are now for Parishes which don't agree with women priests
The problem, in my view, isn't a fusty church failing to reflect modern values. If Christian values (or values of any other religion) reflect the preferences of aj ineffable God, it seems unlikely to me that that God - who, if we are to believe the church, has been pretty anti-gay for tge last two millenia - has now changed his mind. What seems more likely is that the church doesn't really know, and never knew, what God thinks on any given subject, but knows what society thinks and is desperately trying to reflect that back. So the problem isn't that the church is wrong, it's that we listen to the church at all. We shouldn't be telling it what to think or do, we should be gently removing it from the decision-making process.
Western society you mean. In most of Africa and Asia there is no legal homosexual marriage, same with most of Eastern Europe and Italy and in some parts of North Africa and the Middle East and South Asia homosexuality is still illegal.
For those who are members of churches the position of that Church is significant. If the Church of England as the established church in England allows its clergy to conduct same sex marriage in England if they wish that will be a significant moment (Jesus for example never said anything against homosexual marriage)
But the church in those places is imply reflecting those societies' value back at it too. The problem is not that the church's - any church's views are 'wrong' - it is that the church doesn't have the insight it claims into what 'right' and 'wrong' are: the fact that its views are so mutable, and always seem to match the views of the society it operates within, suggest very strongly that it doesn't 'know' what God thinks, it is just winging it based on what it thinks society wants to hear. It is therefore adding no value to the decision making process. I'm not saying religion should be abolished - I do think it has a value - but that value isn't to the decision making process. Those of us who don't believe should neither tell those who do what they should think, nor pay any mind to what churches think the 'right' course of action is - because they have no more insight than anyone else.
Disestablish. Don't let religious organisations act as state registrars. Obviously let people get married in any religious ceremony they want. Just make them go to the registry office afterwards if they want a state-registered marriage. Of course churches should be allowed to say what they think is right and wrong. (And perhaps they do sometimes have more insight than those who don't think much about what's right and what's wrong. I'll judge that on each issue.)
No because if the Church of England allows homosexual marriages by its priests then the moment you disestablish the Roman Catholic Church, which takes a much harder anti gay marriage line, almost certainly becomes the largest Christian church in England within a decade again.
So you end up with an even harder line national Christian Church than you have now.
I also as a member of the Church of England would object to being forced to go to a registry office service I don't see as validating my marriage as well as the C of E service I do think validated it
But the Catholic Church doesn't become the national church, because: 1) If the CofE is any good, it will retain its numbers. And if it isn't, it doesn't deserve to stay as the 'national church'; but more importantly 2) in the scenario DJ41 describes, we don't have a national church at all. The secular majority simply stop listening to what the church say. The churches are free to say whatever they want, but the rest of us don't have to pay them any heed.
Do you object to registering the birth of your child in a registry office? If not, why would you object to registering your marriage? It only needs to be a 5 minute job telling the state about it. You can still celebrate it, properly, in as much depth as you consider appropriate, in a church, in front of your friends, family and God. A quick trip to Epping Registry office with your new wife when you return from honeymoon to fill in a form doesn't strike me as onerous.
Yes it does. In virtually every other nation where Christians are the majority or plurality religious group, the Roman Catholic Church is the largest religious denomination. The only other exceptions are nations like Denmark where the Lutheran Church of Denmark is the established church or South Africa or Ghana where Pentecostal evangelical churches are the largest Christian group.
If the Church of England was disestablished most of the Anglo Catholics would become Roman Catholic and most of the evangelicals would become Pentecostal or Baptist as is the case in the USA for example where the Episcopalian Church is a smaller largely liberal church with hardline evangelicals and Catholics pushing against abortion and gay marriage.
The latter of course means the Christian churches become increasingly pushing a political agenda and free of being established don't give a toss what the secular majority think. Indeed with immigrants tending to be more socially conservative Christians and Muslims too.
Signing a form to register your child is not the same as having to have a second baptism service at a registry office
Russia?
Well the Eastern Orthodox Church is basically the Roman Catholic Church just with a Patriarch not Pope and even more ornate ceremony
Okaaaayyyyyy....
I clearly missed that time the Catholics allowed lay clergy below the rank of bishop to marry.
Michael Cerularius would be spinning in his grave at HYUFD's comments.
I am actually with HYUFD here. The Orthodox and Catholic feud is the narcissism of small differences. They are both the remaining State Church of the Roman Empire. A bit like Italian and Spanish both being legacy vulgar Latin.
Where I don't agree is the conflating of Pauline marriage and Old Testament marriage. Pauline marriage is the Roman view: the strict lifelong monogamy as demanded by Jesus, but with added homophobia. Old Testament marriage allowed hundreds of wives, plus concubines, plus sex slaves. That's worst than Muslim marriage, which is up to four wives plus sex slaves. Ironically the adaption from polygamy to monogamy between the OT and the NT is exactly the mindset of the religious establishment adapting the views of God to contemporary society that the Anglicans are now doing today.
Depends which part, the Ten Commandments forbade adultery
Remember, it's not premarital sex if you never get married.
In the Bible Corinthians opposes sex outside marriage and immorality as does the Koran at 24:2 (including lashings for unmarried fornicators)
Well, if you're (still) talking about gay marriage, don't forget Leviticus 20:13: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death"
Never mind this namby-pamby stuff about no gay marriages in church. Bible-believing Christians should be campaigning for the death penalty for sodomy.
Teachers have been offered 5% which is not much different to the average 6% national payrise at the moment
Breaking
NAHT vote does not meet legal requirement
It's about the same turnout as NASUWT's. Although the NASUWT result was like the NEU 9-1 to strike.
And somewhat moot anyway. I can't imagine many schools being able to operate safely without NEU staff, or there being much goodwill to make the effort to try.
I think the only question (at secondary level anyway) will be do they try to keep Year 10 in as well as Year 11? And my guess is, probably not. Particularly given that level of fed-upness among heads. For them to vote two-to-one to strike is extraordinary.
During the mega teacher strikes of the late 80's, my school gave us special timetables with gaps in- we came in for lessons with non-striking teachers but were sent home if we had Mr Militant for history. Can't see that being accepted from a safeguarding point of view today.
What might happen is a revival of online learning from the early days of Covid. If anyone can be found to run that. Doesn't help with the childcare aspect of schools, which is what is really going to annoy people.
Of course, this suits the Tories as much as it suits Nicola Sturgeon. Starmer will have to give his opinion on the matter.
I will be intrigued to see what he says. It's quite a challenge he's been set here. How can he say 'they are all total fuckwits with no manners cynically misusing rights legislation for their own retarded agendas' without sounding rude?
Teachers have been offered 5% which is not much different to the average 6% national payrise at the moment
Breaking
NAHT vote does not meet legal requirement
It's about the same turnout as NASUWT's. Although the NASUWT result was like the NEU 9-1 to strike.
And somewhat moot anyway. I can't imagine many schools being able to operate safely without NEU staff, or there being much goodwill to make the effort to try.
I think the only question (at secondary level anyway) will be do they try to keep Year 10 in as well as Year 11? And my guess is, probably not. Particularly given that level of fed-upness among heads. For them to vote two-to-one to strike is extraordinary.
During the mega teacher strikes of the late 80's, my school gave us special timetables with gaps in- we came in for lessons with non-striking teachers but were sent home if we had Mr Militant for history. Can't see that being accepted from a safeguarding point of view today.
What might happen is a revival of online learning from the early days of Covid. If anyone can be found to run that. Doesn't help with the childcare aspect of schools, which is what is really going to annoy people.
Penny Mordaunt has urged Church of England bishops to allow gay marriage ahead of their historic vote, marking the first intervention by a cabinet minister on the issue.
Ms Mordaunt, Leader of the House of Commons and MP for Portsmouth North, has written to the Bishop of Portsmouth, calling on him to to “recognize the pain and trauma” that failure to recognise same-sex marriage causes to “many LGBT+ people who are left feeling that they are treated as second class citizens within our society”.
Currently, according to canon law, no Church of England minister can bless or marry gay couples. Ms Mordaunt’s interjection marks the first time that a serving cabinet secretary has called for the issue to be reformed within the Church of England. She also warned that if bishops failed to approve same-sex marriage, the issue would only “fester and detract” from any positive contribution from the institution.
Her comments also come as next month, bishops will present their long-awaited findings to the General Synod – the Church’s legislative body – on whether the ban on gay marriage could be overturned.
Given a 2/3 majority for major change is needed in the House of Bishops, House of Clergy and House of Laity, I doubt there will be drastic change at Synod next month.
Evangelicals will block full endorsement of homosexual marriage and liberals will block retaining only a biblical Old Testament, Pauline view of marriage as between a man and woman.
So as with women priests or divorcee marriage I expect a fudge.
Church of England priests who want to bless same sex couples marriages will be able to, those who don't won't be forced to.
There may even be more flying Bishops in the Church of England as there are now for Parishes which don't agree with women priests
The problem, in my view, isn't a fusty church failing to reflect modern values. If Christian values (or values of any other religion) reflect the preferences of aj ineffable God, it seems unlikely to me that that God - who, if we are to believe the church, has been pretty anti-gay for tge last two millenia - has now changed his mind. What seems more likely is that the church doesn't really know, and never knew, what God thinks on any given subject, but knows what society thinks and is desperately trying to reflect that back. So the problem isn't that the church is wrong, it's that we listen to the church at all. We shouldn't be telling it what to think or do, we should be gently removing it from the decision-making process.
Western society you mean. In most of Africa and Asia there is no legal homosexual marriage, same with most of Eastern Europe and Italy and in some parts of North Africa and the Middle East and South Asia homosexuality is still illegal.
For those who are members of churches the position of that Church is significant. If the Church of England as the established church in England allows its clergy to conduct same sex marriage in England if they wish that will be a significant moment (Jesus for example never said anything against homosexual marriage)
But the church in those places is imply reflecting those societies' value back at it too. The problem is not that the church's - any church's views are 'wrong' - it is that the church doesn't have the insight it claims into what 'right' and 'wrong' are: the fact that its views are so mutable, and always seem to match the views of the society it operates within, suggest very strongly that it doesn't 'know' what God thinks, it is just winging it based on what it thinks society wants to hear. It is therefore adding no value to the decision making process. I'm not saying religion should be abolished - I do think it has a value - but that value isn't to the decision making process. Those of us who don't believe should neither tell those who do what they should think, nor pay any mind to what churches think the 'right' course of action is - because they have no more insight than anyone else.
Disestablish. Don't let religious organisations act as state registrars. Obviously let people get married in any religious ceremony they want. Just make them go to the registry office afterwards if they want a state-registered marriage. Of course churches should be allowed to say what they think is right and wrong. (And perhaps they do sometimes have more insight than those who don't think much about what's right and what's wrong. I'll judge that on each issue.)
No because if the Church of England allows homosexual marriages by its priests then the moment you disestablish the Roman Catholic Church, which takes a much harder anti gay marriage line, almost certainly becomes the largest Christian church in England within a decade again.
So you end up with an even harder line national Christian Church than you have now.
I also as a member of the Church of England would object to being forced to go to a registry office service I don't see as validating my marriage as well as the C of E service I do think validated it
But the Catholic Church doesn't become the national church, because: 1) If the CofE is any good, it will retain its numbers. And if it isn't, it doesn't deserve to stay as the 'national church'; but more importantly 2) in the scenario DJ41 describes, we don't have a national church at all. The secular majority simply stop listening to what the church say. The churches are free to say whatever they want, but the rest of us don't have to pay them any heed.
Do you object to registering the birth of your child in a registry office? If not, why would you object to registering your marriage? It only needs to be a 5 minute job telling the state about it. You can still celebrate it, properly, in as much depth as you consider appropriate, in a church, in front of your friends, family and God. A quick trip to Epping Registry office with your new wife when you return from honeymoon to fill in a form doesn't strike me as onerous.
Yes it does. In virtually every other nation where Christians are the majority or plurality religious group, the Roman Catholic Church is the largest religious denomination. The only other exceptions are nations like Denmark where the Lutheran Church of Denmark is the established church or South Africa or Ghana where Pentecostal evangelical churches are the largest Christian group.
If the Church of England was disestablished most of the Anglo Catholics would become Roman Catholic and most of the evangelicals would become Pentecostal or Baptist as is the case in the USA for example where the Episcopalian Church is a smaller largely liberal church with hardline evangelicals and Catholics pushing against abortion and gay marriage.
The latter of course means the Christian churches become increasingly pushing a political agenda and free of being established don't give a toss what the secular majority think. Indeed with immigrants tending to be more socially conservative Christians and Muslims too.
Signing a form to register your child is not the same as having to have a second baptism service at a registry office
Russia?
Well the Eastern Orthodox Church is basically the Roman Catholic Church just with a Patriarch not Pope and even more ornate ceremony
Okaaaayyyyyy....
I clearly missed that time the Catholics allowed lay clergy below the rank of bishop to marry.
Michael Cerularius would be spinning in his grave at HYUFD's comments.
I am actually with HYUFD here. The Orthodox and Catholic feud is the narcissism of small differences. They are both the remaining State Church of the Roman Empire. A bit like Italian and Spanish both being legacy vulgar Latin.
Where I don't agree is the conflating of Pauline marriage and Old Testament marriage. Pauline marriage is the Roman view: the strict lifelong monogamy as demanded by Jesus, but with added homophobia. Old Testament marriage allowed hundreds of wives, plus concubines, plus sex slaves. That's worst than Muslim marriage, which is up to four wives plus sex slaves. Ironically the adaption from polygamy to monogamy between the OT and the NT is exactly the mindset of the religious establishment adapting the views of God to contemporary society that the Anglicans are now doing today.
Depends which part, the Ten Commandments forbade adultery
Remember, it's not premarital sex if you never get married.
In the Bible Corinthians opposes sex outside marriage and immorality as does the Koran at 24:2 (including lashings for unmarried fornicators)
Well, if you're (still) talking about gay marriage, don't forget Leviticus 20:13: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death"
Never mind this namby-pamby stuff about no gay marriages in church. Bible-believing Christians should be campaigning for the death penalty for sodomy.
Leviticus is Old Testament rather than New which is the basis of the Christian Bible and certainly nothing Jesus said.
Though of course homosexuality is punishable by death in Afghanistan and some parts of the Middle East even today unfortunately
Of course, this suits the Tories as much as it suits Nicola Sturgeon. Starmer will have to give his opinion on the matter.
I will be intrigued to see what he says. It's quite a challenge he's been set here. How can he say 'they are all total fuckwits with no manners cynically misusing rights legislation for their own retarded agendas' without sounding rude?
I guess he says:
I don't have an opinion on the Scottish Bill, it's their business. The Tories are playing politics with people's lives.
Penny Mordaunt has urged Church of England bishops to allow gay marriage ahead of their historic vote, marking the first intervention by a cabinet minister on the issue.
Ms Mordaunt, Leader of the House of Commons and MP for Portsmouth North, has written to the Bishop of Portsmouth, calling on him to to “recognize the pain and trauma” that failure to recognise same-sex marriage causes to “many LGBT+ people who are left feeling that they are treated as second class citizens within our society”.
Currently, according to canon law, no Church of England minister can bless or marry gay couples. Ms Mordaunt’s interjection marks the first time that a serving cabinet secretary has called for the issue to be reformed within the Church of England. She also warned that if bishops failed to approve same-sex marriage, the issue would only “fester and detract” from any positive contribution from the institution.
Her comments also come as next month, bishops will present their long-awaited findings to the General Synod – the Church’s legislative body – on whether the ban on gay marriage could be overturned.
Given a 2/3 majority for major change is needed in the House of Bishops, House of Clergy and House of Laity, I doubt there will be drastic change at Synod next month.
Evangelicals will block full endorsement of homosexual marriage and liberals will block retaining only a biblical Old Testament, Pauline view of marriage as between a man and woman.
So as with women priests or divorcee marriage I expect a fudge.
Church of England priests who want to bless same sex couples marriages will be able to, those who don't won't be forced to.
There may even be more flying Bishops in the Church of England as there are now for Parishes which don't agree with women priests
The problem, in my view, isn't a fusty church failing to reflect modern values. If Christian values (or values of any other religion) reflect the preferences of aj ineffable God, it seems unlikely to me that that God - who, if we are to believe the church, has been pretty anti-gay for tge last two millenia - has now changed his mind. What seems more likely is that the church doesn't really know, and never knew, what God thinks on any given subject, but knows what society thinks and is desperately trying to reflect that back. So the problem isn't that the church is wrong, it's that we listen to the church at all. We shouldn't be telling it what to think or do, we should be gently removing it from the decision-making process.
Western society you mean. In most of Africa and Asia there is no legal homosexual marriage, same with most of Eastern Europe and Italy and in some parts of North Africa and the Middle East and South Asia homosexuality is still illegal.
For those who are members of churches the position of that Church is significant. If the Church of England as the established church in England allows its clergy to conduct same sex marriage in England if they wish that will be a significant moment (Jesus for example never said anything against homosexual marriage)
But the church in those places is imply reflecting those societies' value back at it too. The problem is not that the church's - any church's views are 'wrong' - it is that the church doesn't have the insight it claims into what 'right' and 'wrong' are: the fact that its views are so mutable, and always seem to match the views of the society it operates within, suggest very strongly that it doesn't 'know' what God thinks, it is just winging it based on what it thinks society wants to hear. It is therefore adding no value to the decision making process. I'm not saying religion should be abolished - I do think it has a value - but that value isn't to the decision making process. Those of us who don't believe should neither tell those who do what they should think, nor pay any mind to what churches think the 'right' course of action is - because they have no more insight than anyone else.
Disestablish. Don't let religious organisations act as state registrars. Obviously let people get married in any religious ceremony they want. Just make them go to the registry office afterwards if they want a state-registered marriage. Of course churches should be allowed to say what they think is right and wrong. (And perhaps they do sometimes have more insight than those who don't think much about what's right and what's wrong. I'll judge that on each issue.)
No because if the Church of England allows homosexual marriages by its priests then the moment you disestablish the Roman Catholic Church, which takes a much harder anti gay marriage line, almost certainly becomes the largest Christian church in England within a decade again.
So you end up with an even harder line national Christian Church than you have now.
I also as a member of the Church of England would object to being forced to go to a registry office service I don't see as validating my marriage as well as the C of E service I do think validated it
But the Catholic Church doesn't become the national church, because: 1) If the CofE is any good, it will retain its numbers. And if it isn't, it doesn't deserve to stay as the 'national church'; but more importantly 2) in the scenario DJ41 describes, we don't have a national church at all. The secular majority simply stop listening to what the church say. The churches are free to say whatever they want, but the rest of us don't have to pay them any heed.
Do you object to registering the birth of your child in a registry office? If not, why would you object to registering your marriage? It only needs to be a 5 minute job telling the state about it. You can still celebrate it, properly, in as much depth as you consider appropriate, in a church, in front of your friends, family and God. A quick trip to Epping Registry office with your new wife when you return from honeymoon to fill in a form doesn't strike me as onerous.
Yes it does. In virtually every other nation where Christians are the majority or plurality religious group, the Roman Catholic Church is the largest religious denomination. The only other exceptions are nations like Denmark where the Lutheran Church of Denmark is the established church or South Africa or Ghana where Pentecostal evangelical churches are the largest Christian group.
If the Church of England was disestablished most of the Anglo Catholics would become Roman Catholic and most of the evangelicals would become Pentecostal or Baptist as is the case in the USA for example where the Episcopalian Church is a smaller largely liberal church with hardline evangelicals and Catholics pushing against abortion and gay marriage.
The latter of course means the Christian churches become increasingly pushing a political agenda and free of being established don't give a toss what the secular majority think. Indeed with immigrants tending to be more socially conservative Christians and Muslims too.
Signing a form to register your child is not the same as having to have a second baptism service at a registry office
Russia?
Well the Eastern Orthodox Church is basically the Roman Catholic Church just with a Patriarch not Pope and even more ornate ceremony
Okaaaayyyyyy....
I clearly missed that time the Catholics allowed lay clergy below the rank of bishop to marry.
Michael Cerularius would be spinning in his grave at HYUFD's comments.
I am actually with HYUFD here. The Orthodox and Catholic feud is the narcissism of small differences. They are both the remaining State Church of the Roman Empire. A bit like Italian and Spanish both being legacy vulgar Latin.
Where I don't agree is the conflating of Pauline marriage and Old Testament marriage. Pauline marriage is the Roman view: the strict lifelong monogamy as demanded by Jesus, but with added homophobia. Old Testament marriage allowed hundreds of wives, plus concubines, plus sex slaves. That's worst than Muslim marriage, which is up to four wives plus sex slaves. Ironically the adaption from polygamy to monogamy between the OT and the NT is exactly the mindset of the religious establishment adapting the views of God to contemporary society that the Anglicans are now doing today.
Depends which part, the Ten Commandments forbade adultery
Remember, it's not premarital sex if you never get married.
In the Bible Corinthians opposes sex outside marriage and immorality as does the Koran at 24:2 (including lashings for unmarried fornicators)
Well, if you're (still) talking about gay marriage, don't forget Leviticus 20:13: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death"
Never mind this namby-pamby stuff about no gay marriages in church. Bible-believing Christians should be campaigning for the death penalty for sodomy.
Henry VIII was a firm believer in Leviticus, which is why he introduced a death penalty for buggery, in 1533. Prior to that, it was an ecclesiastical, rather than a criminal, offence.
This is a full-frontal attack on our democratically elected Scottish Parliament and it's ability to make it's own decisions on devolved matters. @scotgov will defend the legislation & stand up for Scotland’s Parliament. If this Westminster veto succeeds, it will be first of many
Developers are not sitting on land with planning permission in vast quantities. Getting planning permission is an expensive business (lots of fat fee solicitors) and it generally lapses after 3 years.
I’ve asked to do a planning law seat, so that should be fun.
One application in my ward (for 28 homes): pushed through on appeal due to lack of 5-year land supply in 2016. One trench dug so far. Only action has been to apply to remove conditions placed on it (rejected, approved on appeal) and to sell the permissioned land on.
One major application in my ward and the one over, for over 4,000 houses. Six major developers involved. We've worked with them, it's a strategic site, and has been given outline approval. They said at the committee meeting that they would build out over 25 years. When asked why not do it quicker (we need houses sooner rather than later, and there are six major developers involved), it wasn't due to resource constraints but simply "for supply and demand control." They fear building out rather than dribbling it out would slow price increases.
Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the Scottish Bill it was agreed in parliament there and for Westminster to use a section 35 order to block it is outrageous .
If it impacts on UK-wide equality legislation then there is nothing outrageous about it.
Bit of a nailbiter there. Given the current atmosphere that this is a moment for striking, I do wonder what could push the turnout any higher.
Tricky. A lot of teachers only join a union to get access to professional insurance and legal support if their head decides they don't like they way they teach. In a lot of fields, they simply wouldn't be union members.
(There's also something odd with a set of rules where not voting can be more effective opposition than voting against. Had the 9.6% NEU voters sat on their hands instead, the ballot would have failed to pass the turnout rule.)
Talking of which:
Also breaking: NAHTnews ballot has not reached turnout threshold
In England 64% of those who voted supported strikes, while 87% voted in favour of action short of a strike.
Look at the stats. Andz think if your statement makes sense.
If you think that the London teachers are (a) so frequent and (b) so much better paid as to bring the average to 102K then maybe you are counting to a different base. Base 7 and a half, perhaps?
Plus you're flat wrong about the 400K. Read your source again.
The head of an academy trust certainly earnt over £400k and a number of secondary school headteachers earnt over £200k and salaries that would be similar to those earnt by a partner in a corporate law firm
Penny Mordaunt has urged Church of England bishops to allow gay marriage ahead of their historic vote, marking the first intervention by a cabinet minister on the issue.
Ms Mordaunt, Leader of the House of Commons and MP for Portsmouth North, has written to the Bishop of Portsmouth, calling on him to to “recognize the pain and trauma” that failure to recognise same-sex marriage causes to “many LGBT+ people who are left feeling that they are treated as second class citizens within our society”.
Currently, according to canon law, no Church of England minister can bless or marry gay couples. Ms Mordaunt’s interjection marks the first time that a serving cabinet secretary has called for the issue to be reformed within the Church of England. She also warned that if bishops failed to approve same-sex marriage, the issue would only “fester and detract” from any positive contribution from the institution.
Her comments also come as next month, bishops will present their long-awaited findings to the General Synod – the Church’s legislative body – on whether the ban on gay marriage could be overturned.
Given a 2/3 majority for major change is needed in the House of Bishops, House of Clergy and House of Laity, I doubt there will be drastic change at Synod next month.
Evangelicals will block full endorsement of homosexual marriage and liberals will block retaining only a biblical Old Testament, Pauline view of marriage as between a man and woman.
So as with women priests or divorcee marriage I expect a fudge.
Church of England priests who want to bless same sex couples marriages will be able to, those who don't won't be forced to.
There may even be more flying Bishops in the Church of England as there are now for Parishes which don't agree with women priests
The problem, in my view, isn't a fusty church failing to reflect modern values. If Christian values (or values of any other religion) reflect the preferences of aj ineffable God, it seems unlikely to me that that God - who, if we are to believe the church, has been pretty anti-gay for tge last two millenia - has now changed his mind. What seems more likely is that the church doesn't really know, and never knew, what God thinks on any given subject, but knows what society thinks and is desperately trying to reflect that back. So the problem isn't that the church is wrong, it's that we listen to the church at all. We shouldn't be telling it what to think or do, we should be gently removing it from the decision-making process.
Western society you mean. In most of Africa and Asia there is no legal homosexual marriage, same with most of Eastern Europe and Italy and in some parts of North Africa and the Middle East and South Asia homosexuality is still illegal.
For those who are members of churches the position of that Church is significant. If the Church of England as the established church in England allows its clergy to conduct same sex marriage in England if they wish that will be a significant moment (Jesus for example never said anything against homosexual marriage)
But the church in those places is imply reflecting those societies' value back at it too. The problem is not that the church's - any church's views are 'wrong' - it is that the church doesn't have the insight it claims into what 'right' and 'wrong' are: the fact that its views are so mutable, and always seem to match the views of the society it operates within, suggest very strongly that it doesn't 'know' what God thinks, it is just winging it based on what it thinks society wants to hear. It is therefore adding no value to the decision making process. I'm not saying religion should be abolished - I do think it has a value - but that value isn't to the decision making process. Those of us who don't believe should neither tell those who do what they should think, nor pay any mind to what churches think the 'right' course of action is - because they have no more insight than anyone else.
Disestablish. Don't let religious organisations act as state registrars. Obviously let people get married in any religious ceremony they want. Just make them go to the registry office afterwards if they want a state-registered marriage. Of course churches should be allowed to say what they think is right and wrong. (And perhaps they do sometimes have more insight than those who don't think much about what's right and what's wrong. I'll judge that on each issue.)
No because if the Church of England allows homosexual marriages by its priests then the moment you disestablish the Roman Catholic Church, which takes a much harder anti gay marriage line, almost certainly becomes the largest Christian church in England within a decade again.
So you end up with an even harder line national Christian Church than you have now.
I also as a member of the Church of England would object to being forced to go to a registry office service I don't see as validating my marriage as well as the C of E service I do think validated it
But the Catholic Church doesn't become the national church, because: 1) If the CofE is any good, it will retain its numbers. And if it isn't, it doesn't deserve to stay as the 'national church'; but more importantly 2) in the scenario DJ41 describes, we don't have a national church at all. The secular majority simply stop listening to what the church say. The churches are free to say whatever they want, but the rest of us don't have to pay them any heed.
Do you object to registering the birth of your child in a registry office? If not, why would you object to registering your marriage? It only needs to be a 5 minute job telling the state about it. You can still celebrate it, properly, in as much depth as you consider appropriate, in a church, in front of your friends, family and God. A quick trip to Epping Registry office with your new wife when you return from honeymoon to fill in a form doesn't strike me as onerous.
Yes it does. In virtually every other nation where Christians are the majority or plurality religious group, the Roman Catholic Church is the largest religious denomination. The only other exceptions are nations like Denmark where the Lutheran Church of Denmark is the established church or South Africa or Ghana where Pentecostal evangelical churches are the largest Christian group.
If the Church of England was disestablished most of the Anglo Catholics would become Roman Catholic and most of the evangelicals would become Pentecostal or Baptist as is the case in the USA for example where the Episcopalian Church is a smaller largely liberal church with hardline evangelicals and Catholics pushing against abortion and gay marriage.
The latter of course means the Christian churches become increasingly pushing a political agenda and free of being established don't give a toss what the secular majority think. Indeed with immigrants tending to be more socially conservative Christians and Muslims too.
Signing a form to register your child is not the same as having to have a second baptism service at a registry office
Russia?
Well the Eastern Orthodox Church is basically the Roman Catholic Church just with a Patriarch not Pope and even more ornate ceremony
Okaaaayyyyyy....
I clearly missed that time the Catholics allowed lay clergy below the rank of bishop to marry.
Michael Cerularius would be spinning in his grave at HYUFD's comments.
I am actually with HYUFD here. The Orthodox and Catholic feud is the narcissism of small differences. They are both the remaining State Church of the Roman Empire. A bit like Italian and Spanish both being legacy vulgar Latin.
Where I don't agree is the conflating of Pauline marriage and Old Testament marriage. Pauline marriage is the Roman view: the strict lifelong monogamy as demanded by Jesus, but with added homophobia. Old Testament marriage allowed hundreds of wives, plus concubines, plus sex slaves. That's worst than Muslim marriage, which is up to four wives plus sex slaves. Ironically the adaption from polygamy to monogamy between the OT and the NT is exactly the mindset of the religious establishment adapting the views of God to contemporary society that the Anglicans are now doing today.
Depends which part, the Ten Commandments forbade adultery
Remember, it's not premarital sex if you never get married.
In the Bible Corinthians opposes sex outside marriage and immorality as does the Koran at 24:2 (including lashings for unmarried fornicators)
Well, if you're (still) talking about gay marriage, don't forget Leviticus 20:13: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death"
Never mind this namby-pamby stuff about no gay marriages in church. Bible-believing Christians should be campaigning for the death penalty for sodomy.
Leviticus is Old Testament rather than New which is the basis of the Christian Bible and certainly nothing Jesus said.
Though of course homosexuality is punishable by death in Afghanistan and some parts of the Middle East even today unfortunately
It's certainly news to me that the Mosaic Law is not part of the Christian Bible, or indeed that Jesus didn't endorse every "jot and tittle" of it.
But perhaps I'm out of date with "traditional Christianity". Things change so fast these days.
Scottish Green MSP Maggie Chapman on @LBC just now said that for the UK Government "even to threaten to act is entirely inappropriate" and they would be "playing roughshod with devolution". #GRRBill
She said she couldn't possibly know what sex she was because she had never had her chromosomes tested..
I think everyone's overlooking the obvious. This isn't about transgender rights. That's not something Sturgeon cares about, as far as can be judged. This is about shoring up her political base on one hand, while daring the UK Parliament to overrule her for exceeding her powers so she can claim to be being victimised.
Meanwhile, precisely because she's acting as though she's President of Scotland, Westminster is looking for an excuse to slap her down and remind her she isn't.
The irony that it's over something as tangential as this is probably more apparent than real. If anyone took this subject especially seriously they would have thrashed it out in advance to ensure this didn't happen.
It's essentially the same reform as in place in several other countries and that Mrs May's government planned to do in 2018. Agree or not, it's not some wild and crazy whim of Nicola Sturgeon’s.
Bit of a nailbiter there. Given the current atmosphere that this is a moment for striking, I do wonder what could push the turnout any higher.
Tricky. A lot of teachers only join a union to get access to professional insurance and legal support if their head decides they don't like they way they teach. In a lot of fields, they simply wouldn't be union members.
(There's also something odd with a set of rules where not voting can be more effective opposition than voting against. Had the 9.6% NEU voters sat on their hands instead, the ballot would have failed to pass the turnout rule.)
Talking of which:
Also breaking: NAHTnews ballot has not reached turnout threshold
In England 64% of those who voted supported strikes, while 87% voted in favour of action short of a strike.
Look at the stats. Andz think if your statement makes sense.
If you think that the London teachers are (a) so frequent and (b) so much better paid as to bring the average to 102K then maybe you are counting to a different base. Base 7 and a half, perhaps?
Plus you're flat wrong about the 400K. Read your source again.
The head of an academy trust certainly earnt over £400k and a number of secondary school headteachers earnt over £200k and salaries that would be similar to those earnt by a partner in a corporate law firm
Head of an academy trust = company chief exec, NOT a headmaster. Read the article yet again. "The top earner by far, however, is Sir Dan Moynihan, chief executive of the Harris Federation, which runs 48 primary and secondary academies. He has seen his salary increase to between £455,000 and £460,000 [...]"
And remember - you claimed ""Given the average secondary school headteacher earns £102,000 a year".
Bit of a nailbiter there. Given the current atmosphere that this is a moment for striking, I do wonder what could push the turnout any higher.
Tricky. A lot of teachers only join a union to get access to professional insurance and legal support if their head decides they don't like they way they teach. In a lot of fields, they simply wouldn't be union members.
(There's also something odd with a set of rules where not voting can be more effective opposition than voting against. Had the 9.6% NEU voters sat on their hands instead, the ballot would have failed to pass the turnout rule.)
Talking of which:
Also breaking: NAHTnews ballot has not reached turnout threshold
In England 64% of those who voted supported strikes, while 87% voted in favour of action short of a strike.
Look at the stats. Andz think if your statement makes sense.
If you think that the London teachers are (a) so frequent and (b) so much better paid as to bring the average to 102K then maybe you are counting to a different base. Base 7 and a half, perhaps?
Plus you're flat wrong about the 400K. Read your source again.
The head of an academy trust certainly earnt over £400k and a number of secondary school headteachers earnt over £200k and salaries that would be similar to those earnt by a partner in a corporate law firm
Head of an academy trust = company chief exec, NOT a headmaster. Read the article yet again. "The top earner by far, however, is Sir Dan Moynihan, chief executive of the Harris Federation, which runs 48 primary and secondary academies. He has seen his salary increase to between £455,000 and £460,000 [...]"
And remember - you claimed ""Given the average secondary school headteacher earns £102,000 a year".
Scottish Green MSP Maggie Chapman on @LBC just now said that for the UK Government "even to threaten to act is entirely inappropriate" and they would be "playing roughshod with devolution". #GRRBill
She said she couldn't possibly know what sex she was because she had never had her chromosomes tested..
I think everyone's overlooking the obvious. This isn't about transgender rights. That's not something Sturgeon cares about, as far as can be judged. This is about shoring up her political base on one hand, while daring the UK Parliament to overrule her for exceeding her powers so she can claim to be being victimised.
Meanwhile, precisely because she's acting as though she's President of Scotland, Westminster is looking for an excuse to slap her down and remind her she isn't.
The irony that it's over something as tangential as this is probably more apparent than real. If anyone took this subject especially seriously they would have thrashed it out in advance to ensure this didn't happen.
It's essentially the same reform as in place in several other countries and that Mrs May's government planned to do in 2018. Agree or not, it's not some wild and crazy whim of Nicola Sturgeon’s.
Quite. The UN observer was telling them to get on with the basic reform.
One of us pointed out that the next problem was that sorting out all the consequences required modificastion to equality rights law which remained within Westminster remit, so basically the Scottish Pmt were damned whatever they did if HMG and the Tories wanted to obstruct.
Penny Mordaunt has urged Church of England bishops to allow gay marriage ahead of their historic vote, marking the first intervention by a cabinet minister on the issue.
Ms Mordaunt, Leader of the House of Commons and MP for Portsmouth North, has written to the Bishop of Portsmouth, calling on him to to “recognize the pain and trauma” that failure to recognise same-sex marriage causes to “many LGBT+ people who are left feeling that they are treated as second class citizens within our society”.
Currently, according to canon law, no Church of England minister can bless or marry gay couples. Ms Mordaunt’s interjection marks the first time that a serving cabinet secretary has called for the issue to be reformed within the Church of England. She also warned that if bishops failed to approve same-sex marriage, the issue would only “fester and detract” from any positive contribution from the institution.
Her comments also come as next month, bishops will present their long-awaited findings to the General Synod – the Church’s legislative body – on whether the ban on gay marriage could be overturned.
Given a 2/3 majority for major change is needed in the House of Bishops, House of Clergy and House of Laity, I doubt there will be drastic change at Synod next month.
Evangelicals will block full endorsement of homosexual marriage and liberals will block retaining only a biblical Old Testament, Pauline view of marriage as between a man and woman.
So as with women priests or divorcee marriage I expect a fudge.
Church of England priests who want to bless same sex couples marriages will be able to, those who don't won't be forced to.
There may even be more flying Bishops in the Church of England as there are now for Parishes which don't agree with women priests
The problem, in my view, isn't a fusty church failing to reflect modern values. If Christian values (or values of any other religion) reflect the preferences of aj ineffable God, it seems unlikely to me that that God - who, if we are to believe the church, has been pretty anti-gay for tge last two millenia - has now changed his mind. What seems more likely is that the church doesn't really know, and never knew, what God thinks on any given subject, but knows what society thinks and is desperately trying to reflect that back. So the problem isn't that the church is wrong, it's that we listen to the church at all. We shouldn't be telling it what to think or do, we should be gently removing it from the decision-making process.
Western society you mean. In most of Africa and Asia there is no legal homosexual marriage, same with most of Eastern Europe and Italy and in some parts of North Africa and the Middle East and South Asia homosexuality is still illegal.
For those who are members of churches the position of that Church is significant. If the Church of England as the established church in England allows its clergy to conduct same sex marriage in England if they wish that will be a significant moment (Jesus for example never said anything against homosexual marriage)
But the church in those places is imply reflecting those societies' value back at it too. The problem is not that the church's - any church's views are 'wrong' - it is that the church doesn't have the insight it claims into what 'right' and 'wrong' are: the fact that its views are so mutable, and always seem to match the views of the society it operates within, suggest very strongly that it doesn't 'know' what God thinks, it is just winging it based on what it thinks society wants to hear. It is therefore adding no value to the decision making process. I'm not saying religion should be abolished - I do think it has a value - but that value isn't to the decision making process. Those of us who don't believe should neither tell those who do what they should think, nor pay any mind to what churches think the 'right' course of action is - because they have no more insight than anyone else.
Disestablish. Don't let religious organisations act as state registrars. Obviously let people get married in any religious ceremony they want. Just make them go to the registry office afterwards if they want a state-registered marriage. Of course churches should be allowed to say what they think is right and wrong. (And perhaps they do sometimes have more insight than those who don't think much about what's right and what's wrong. I'll judge that on each issue.)
No because if the Church of England allows homosexual marriages by its priests then the moment you disestablish the Roman Catholic Church, which takes a much harder anti gay marriage line, almost certainly becomes the largest Christian church in England within a decade again.
So you end up with an even harder line national Christian Church than you have now.
I also as a member of the Church of England would object to being forced to go to a registry office service I don't see as validating my marriage as well as the C of E service I do think validated it
But the Catholic Church doesn't become the national church, because: 1) If the CofE is any good, it will retain its numbers. And if it isn't, it doesn't deserve to stay as the 'national church'; but more importantly 2) in the scenario DJ41 describes, we don't have a national church at all. The secular majority simply stop listening to what the church say. The churches are free to say whatever they want, but the rest of us don't have to pay them any heed.
Do you object to registering the birth of your child in a registry office? If not, why would you object to registering your marriage? It only needs to be a 5 minute job telling the state about it. You can still celebrate it, properly, in as much depth as you consider appropriate, in a church, in front of your friends, family and God. A quick trip to Epping Registry office with your new wife when you return from honeymoon to fill in a form doesn't strike me as onerous.
Yes it does. In virtually every other nation where Christians are the majority or plurality religious group, the Roman Catholic Church is the largest religious denomination. The only other exceptions are nations like Denmark where the Lutheran Church of Denmark is the established church or South Africa or Ghana where Pentecostal evangelical churches are the largest Christian group.
If the Church of England was disestablished most of the Anglo Catholics would become Roman Catholic and most of the evangelicals would become Pentecostal or Baptist as is the case in the USA for example where the Episcopalian Church is a smaller largely liberal church with hardline evangelicals and Catholics pushing against abortion and gay marriage.
The latter of course means the Christian churches become increasingly pushing a political agenda and free of being established don't give a toss what the secular majority think. Indeed with immigrants tending to be more socially conservative Christians and Muslims too.
Signing a form to register your child is not the same as having to have a second baptism service at a registry office
Russia?
Well the Eastern Orthodox Church is basically the Roman Catholic Church just with a Patriarch not Pope and even more ornate ceremony
Okaaaayyyyyy....
I clearly missed that time the Catholics allowed lay clergy below the rank of bishop to marry.
Michael Cerularius would be spinning in his grave at HYUFD's comments.
I am actually with HYUFD here. The Orthodox and Catholic feud is the narcissism of small differences. They are both the remaining State Church of the Roman Empire. A bit like Italian and Spanish both being legacy vulgar Latin.
Where I don't agree is the conflating of Pauline marriage and Old Testament marriage. Pauline marriage is the Roman view: the strict lifelong monogamy as demanded by Jesus, but with added homophobia. Old Testament marriage allowed hundreds of wives, plus concubines, plus sex slaves. That's worst than Muslim marriage, which is up to four wives plus sex slaves. Ironically the adaption from polygamy to monogamy between the OT and the NT is exactly the mindset of the religious establishment adapting the views of God to contemporary society that the Anglicans are now doing today.
Depends which part, the Ten Commandments forbade adultery
Remember, it's not premarital sex if you never get married.
In the Bible Corinthians opposes sex outside marriage and immorality as does the Koran at 24:2 (including lashings for unmarried fornicators)
Well, if you're (still) talking about gay marriage, don't forget Leviticus 20:13: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death"
Never mind this namby-pamby stuff about no gay marriages in church. Bible-believing Christians should be campaigning for the death penalty for sodomy.
Leviticus is Old Testament rather than New which is the basis of the Christian Bible and certainly nothing Jesus said.
Though of course homosexuality is punishable by death in Afghanistan and some parts of the Middle East even today unfortunately
It's certainly news to me that the Mosaic Law is not part of the Christian Bible, or indeed that Jesus didn't endorse every "jot and tittle" of it.
But perhaps I'm out of date with "traditional Christianity". Things change so fast these days.
Mosaic Law for most Christians is the Ten Commandments, which does not include the death penalty for homosexuality
Bit of a nailbiter there. Given the current atmosphere that this is a moment for striking, I do wonder what could push the turnout any higher.
Tricky. A lot of teachers only join a union to get access to professional insurance and legal support if their head decides they don't like they way they teach. In a lot of fields, they simply wouldn't be union members.
(There's also something odd with a set of rules where not voting can be more effective opposition than voting against. Had the 9.6% NEU voters sat on their hands instead, the ballot would have failed to pass the turnout rule.)
Talking of which:
Also breaking: NAHTnews ballot has not reached turnout threshold
In England 64% of those who voted supported strikes, while 87% voted in favour of action short of a strike.
Look at the stats. Andz think if your statement makes sense.
If you think that the London teachers are (a) so frequent and (b) so much better paid as to bring the average to 102K then maybe you are counting to a different base. Base 7 and a half, perhaps?
Plus you're flat wrong about the 400K. Read your source again.
The head of an academy trust certainly earnt over £400k and a number of secondary school headteachers earnt over £200k and salaries that would be similar to those earnt by a partner in a corporate law firm
Head of an academy trust = company chief exec, NOT a headmaster. Read the article yet again. "The top earner by far, however, is Sir Dan Moynihan, chief executive of the Harris Federation, which runs 48 primary and secondary academies. He has seen his salary increase to between £455,000 and £460,000 [...]"
And remember - you claimed ""Given the average secondary school headteacher earns £102,000 a year".
They do at the top end of the scale
Oh, does the word "average" have a revolutionary new meaning in the Conservative Club at Epping? Or are you just not interested in the concept of documentable fact?
Penny Mordaunt has urged Church of England bishops to allow gay marriage ahead of their historic vote, marking the first intervention by a cabinet minister on the issue.
Ms Mordaunt, Leader of the House of Commons and MP for Portsmouth North, has written to the Bishop of Portsmouth, calling on him to to “recognize the pain and trauma” that failure to recognise same-sex marriage causes to “many LGBT+ people who are left feeling that they are treated as second class citizens within our society”.
Currently, according to canon law, no Church of England minister can bless or marry gay couples. Ms Mordaunt’s interjection marks the first time that a serving cabinet secretary has called for the issue to be reformed within the Church of England. She also warned that if bishops failed to approve same-sex marriage, the issue would only “fester and detract” from any positive contribution from the institution.
Her comments also come as next month, bishops will present their long-awaited findings to the General Synod – the Church’s legislative body – on whether the ban on gay marriage could be overturned.
Given a 2/3 majority for major change is needed in the House of Bishops, House of Clergy and House of Laity, I doubt there will be drastic change at Synod next month.
Evangelicals will block full endorsement of homosexual marriage and liberals will block retaining only a biblical Old Testament, Pauline view of marriage as between a man and woman.
So as with women priests or divorcee marriage I expect a fudge.
Church of England priests who want to bless same sex couples marriages will be able to, those who don't won't be forced to.
There may even be more flying Bishops in the Church of England as there are now for Parishes which don't agree with women priests
The problem, in my view, isn't a fusty church failing to reflect modern values. If Christian values (or values of any other religion) reflect the preferences of aj ineffable God, it seems unlikely to me that that God - who, if we are to believe the church, has been pretty anti-gay for tge last two millenia - has now changed his mind. What seems more likely is that the church doesn't really know, and never knew, what God thinks on any given subject, but knows what society thinks and is desperately trying to reflect that back. So the problem isn't that the church is wrong, it's that we listen to the church at all. We shouldn't be telling it what to think or do, we should be gently removing it from the decision-making process.
Western society you mean. In most of Africa and Asia there is no legal homosexual marriage, same with most of Eastern Europe and Italy and in some parts of North Africa and the Middle East and South Asia homosexuality is still illegal.
For those who are members of churches the position of that Church is significant. If the Church of England as the established church in England allows its clergy to conduct same sex marriage in England if they wish that will be a significant moment (Jesus for example never said anything against homosexual marriage)
But the church in those places is imply reflecting those societies' value back at it too. The problem is not that the church's - any church's views are 'wrong' - it is that the church doesn't have the insight it claims into what 'right' and 'wrong' are: the fact that its views are so mutable, and always seem to match the views of the society it operates within, suggest very strongly that it doesn't 'know' what God thinks, it is just winging it based on what it thinks society wants to hear. It is therefore adding no value to the decision making process. I'm not saying religion should be abolished - I do think it has a value - but that value isn't to the decision making process. Those of us who don't believe should neither tell those who do what they should think, nor pay any mind to what churches think the 'right' course of action is - because they have no more insight than anyone else.
Disestablish. Don't let religious organisations act as state registrars. Obviously let people get married in any religious ceremony they want. Just make them go to the registry office afterwards if they want a state-registered marriage. Of course churches should be allowed to say what they think is right and wrong. (And perhaps they do sometimes have more insight than those who don't think much about what's right and what's wrong. I'll judge that on each issue.)
No because if the Church of England allows homosexual marriages by its priests then the moment you disestablish the Roman Catholic Church, which takes a much harder anti gay marriage line, almost certainly becomes the largest Christian church in England within a decade again.
So you end up with an even harder line national Christian Church than you have now.
I also as a member of the Church of England would object to being forced to go to a registry office service I don't see as validating my marriage as well as the C of E service I do think validated it
But the Catholic Church doesn't become the national church, because: 1) If the CofE is any good, it will retain its numbers. And if it isn't, it doesn't deserve to stay as the 'national church'; but more importantly 2) in the scenario DJ41 describes, we don't have a national church at all. The secular majority simply stop listening to what the church say. The churches are free to say whatever they want, but the rest of us don't have to pay them any heed.
Do you object to registering the birth of your child in a registry office? If not, why would you object to registering your marriage? It only needs to be a 5 minute job telling the state about it. You can still celebrate it, properly, in as much depth as you consider appropriate, in a church, in front of your friends, family and God. A quick trip to Epping Registry office with your new wife when you return from honeymoon to fill in a form doesn't strike me as onerous.
Yes it does. In virtually every other nation where Christians are the majority or plurality religious group, the Roman Catholic Church is the largest religious denomination. The only other exceptions are nations like Denmark where the Lutheran Church of Denmark is the established church or South Africa or Ghana where Pentecostal evangelical churches are the largest Christian group.
If the Church of England was disestablished most of the Anglo Catholics would become Roman Catholic and most of the evangelicals would become Pentecostal or Baptist as is the case in the USA for example where the Episcopalian Church is a smaller largely liberal church with hardline evangelicals and Catholics pushing against abortion and gay marriage.
The latter of course means the Christian churches become increasingly pushing a political agenda and free of being established don't give a toss what the secular majority think. Indeed with immigrants tending to be more socially conservative Christians and Muslims too.
Signing a form to register your child is not the same as having to have a second baptism service at a registry office
Russia?
Well the Eastern Orthodox Church is basically the Roman Catholic Church just with a Patriarch not Pope and even more ornate ceremony
Okaaaayyyyyy....
I clearly missed that time the Catholics allowed lay clergy below the rank of bishop to marry.
Michael Cerularius would be spinning in his grave at HYUFD's comments.
I am actually with HYUFD here. The Orthodox and Catholic feud is the narcissism of small differences. They are both the remaining State Church of the Roman Empire. A bit like Italian and Spanish both being legacy vulgar Latin.
Where I don't agree is the conflating of Pauline marriage and Old Testament marriage. Pauline marriage is the Roman view: the strict lifelong monogamy as demanded by Jesus, but with added homophobia. Old Testament marriage allowed hundreds of wives, plus concubines, plus sex slaves. That's worst than Muslim marriage, which is up to four wives plus sex slaves. Ironically the adaption from polygamy to monogamy between the OT and the NT is exactly the mindset of the religious establishment adapting the views of God to contemporary society that the Anglicans are now doing today.
Depends which part, the Ten Commandments forbade adultery
Remember, it's not premarital sex if you never get married.
In the Bible Corinthians opposes sex outside marriage and immorality as does the Koran at 24:2 (including lashings for unmarried fornicators)
Well, if you're (still) talking about gay marriage, don't forget Leviticus 20:13: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death"
Never mind this namby-pamby stuff about no gay marriages in church. Bible-believing Christians should be campaigning for the death penalty for sodomy.
Leviticus is Old Testament rather than New which is the basis of the Christian Bible and certainly nothing Jesus said.
Though of course homosexuality is punishable by death in Afghanistan and some parts of the Middle East even today unfortunately
It's certainly news to me that the Mosaic Law is not part of the Christian Bible, or indeed that Jesus didn't endorse every "jot and tittle" of it.
But perhaps I'm out of date with "traditional Christianity". Things change so fast these days.
Mosaic Law is the Ten Commandments, which does not include the death penalty for homosexuality
Even I know that there is more to it than that. A lot.
Of course, this suits the Tories as much as it suits Nicola Sturgeon. Starmer will have to give his opinion on the matter.
I will be intrigued to see what he says. It's quite a challenge he's been set here. How can he say 'they are all total fuckwits with no manners cynically misusing rights legislation for their own retarded agendas' without sounding rude?
He'll say he has concerns about the Scottish legislation but that this was not the way to resolve the impasse, without saying how it could have been resolved.
Bit of a nailbiter there. Given the current atmosphere that this is a moment for striking, I do wonder what could push the turnout any higher.
Tricky. A lot of teachers only join a union to get access to professional insurance and legal support if their head decides they don't like they way they teach. In a lot of fields, they simply wouldn't be union members.
(There's also something odd with a set of rules where not voting can be more effective opposition than voting against. Had the 9.6% NEU voters sat on their hands instead, the ballot would have failed to pass the turnout rule.)
Talking of which:
Also breaking: NAHTnews ballot has not reached turnout threshold
In England 64% of those who voted supported strikes, while 87% voted in favour of action short of a strike.
Look at the stats. Andz think if your statement makes sense.
If you think that the London teachers are (a) so frequent and (b) so much better paid as to bring the average to 102K then maybe you are counting to a different base. Base 7 and a half, perhaps?
Plus you're flat wrong about the 400K. Read your source again.
The head of an academy trust certainly earnt over £400k and a number of secondary school headteachers earnt over £200k and salaries that would be similar to those earnt by a partner in a corporate law firm
Head of an academy trust = company chief exec, NOT a headmaster. Read the article yet again. "The top earner by far, however, is Sir Dan Moynihan, chief executive of the Harris Federation, which runs 48 primary and secondary academies. He has seen his salary increase to between £455,000 and £460,000 [...]"
And remember - you claimed ""Given the average secondary school headteacher earns £102,000 a year".
They do at the top end of the scale
Oh, does the word "average" have a revolutionary new meaning in the Conservative Club at Epping? Or are you just not interested in the concept of documentable fact?
At the top end of the scale secondary headteachers have a range from £86k to £117k, so an effective average of £100k yes. Paid for by taxpayers
Penny Mordaunt has urged Church of England bishops to allow gay marriage ahead of their historic vote, marking the first intervention by a cabinet minister on the issue.
Ms Mordaunt, Leader of the House of Commons and MP for Portsmouth North, has written to the Bishop of Portsmouth, calling on him to to “recognize the pain and trauma” that failure to recognise same-sex marriage causes to “many LGBT+ people who are left feeling that they are treated as second class citizens within our society”.
Currently, according to canon law, no Church of England minister can bless or marry gay couples. Ms Mordaunt’s interjection marks the first time that a serving cabinet secretary has called for the issue to be reformed within the Church of England. She also warned that if bishops failed to approve same-sex marriage, the issue would only “fester and detract” from any positive contribution from the institution.
Her comments also come as next month, bishops will present their long-awaited findings to the General Synod – the Church’s legislative body – on whether the ban on gay marriage could be overturned.
Given a 2/3 majority for major change is needed in the House of Bishops, House of Clergy and House of Laity, I doubt there will be drastic change at Synod next month.
Evangelicals will block full endorsement of homosexual marriage and liberals will block retaining only a biblical Old Testament, Pauline view of marriage as between a man and woman.
So as with women priests or divorcee marriage I expect a fudge.
Church of England priests who want to bless same sex couples marriages will be able to, those who don't won't be forced to.
There may even be more flying Bishops in the Church of England as there are now for Parishes which don't agree with women priests
The problem, in my view, isn't a fusty church failing to reflect modern values. If Christian values (or values of any other religion) reflect the preferences of aj ineffable God, it seems unlikely to me that that God - who, if we are to believe the church, has been pretty anti-gay for tge last two millenia - has now changed his mind. What seems more likely is that the church doesn't really know, and never knew, what God thinks on any given subject, but knows what society thinks and is desperately trying to reflect that back. So the problem isn't that the church is wrong, it's that we listen to the church at all. We shouldn't be telling it what to think or do, we should be gently removing it from the decision-making process.
Western society you mean. In most of Africa and Asia there is no legal homosexual marriage, same with most of Eastern Europe and Italy and in some parts of North Africa and the Middle East and South Asia homosexuality is still illegal.
For those who are members of churches the position of that Church is significant. If the Church of England as the established church in England allows its clergy to conduct same sex marriage in England if they wish that will be a significant moment (Jesus for example never said anything against homosexual marriage)
But the church in those places is imply reflecting those societies' value back at it too. The problem is not that the church's - any church's views are 'wrong' - it is that the church doesn't have the insight it claims into what 'right' and 'wrong' are: the fact that its views are so mutable, and always seem to match the views of the society it operates within, suggest very strongly that it doesn't 'know' what God thinks, it is just winging it based on what it thinks society wants to hear. It is therefore adding no value to the decision making process. I'm not saying religion should be abolished - I do think it has a value - but that value isn't to the decision making process. Those of us who don't believe should neither tell those who do what they should think, nor pay any mind to what churches think the 'right' course of action is - because they have no more insight than anyone else.
Disestablish. Don't let religious organisations act as state registrars. Obviously let people get married in any religious ceremony they want. Just make them go to the registry office afterwards if they want a state-registered marriage. Of course churches should be allowed to say what they think is right and wrong. (And perhaps they do sometimes have more insight than those who don't think much about what's right and what's wrong. I'll judge that on each issue.)
No because if the Church of England allows homosexual marriages by its priests then the moment you disestablish the Roman Catholic Church, which takes a much harder anti gay marriage line, almost certainly becomes the largest Christian church in England within a decade again.
So you end up with an even harder line national Christian Church than you have now.
I also as a member of the Church of England would object to being forced to go to a registry office service I don't see as validating my marriage as well as the C of E service I do think validated it
But the Catholic Church doesn't become the national church, because: 1) If the CofE is any good, it will retain its numbers. And if it isn't, it doesn't deserve to stay as the 'national church'; but more importantly 2) in the scenario DJ41 describes, we don't have a national church at all. The secular majority simply stop listening to what the church say. The churches are free to say whatever they want, but the rest of us don't have to pay them any heed.
Do you object to registering the birth of your child in a registry office? If not, why would you object to registering your marriage? It only needs to be a 5 minute job telling the state about it. You can still celebrate it, properly, in as much depth as you consider appropriate, in a church, in front of your friends, family and God. A quick trip to Epping Registry office with your new wife when you return from honeymoon to fill in a form doesn't strike me as onerous.
Yes it does. In virtually every other nation where Christians are the majority or plurality religious group, the Roman Catholic Church is the largest religious denomination. The only other exceptions are nations like Denmark where the Lutheran Church of Denmark is the established church or South Africa or Ghana where Pentecostal evangelical churches are the largest Christian group.
If the Church of England was disestablished most of the Anglo Catholics would become Roman Catholic and most of the evangelicals would become Pentecostal or Baptist as is the case in the USA for example where the Episcopalian Church is a smaller largely liberal church with hardline evangelicals and Catholics pushing against abortion and gay marriage.
The latter of course means the Christian churches become increasingly pushing a political agenda and free of being established don't give a toss what the secular majority think. Indeed with immigrants tending to be more socially conservative Christians and Muslims too.
Signing a form to register your child is not the same as having to have a second baptism service at a registry office
Russia?
Well the Eastern Orthodox Church is basically the Roman Catholic Church just with a Patriarch not Pope and even more ornate ceremony
Okaaaayyyyyy....
I clearly missed that time the Catholics allowed lay clergy below the rank of bishop to marry.
Michael Cerularius would be spinning in his grave at HYUFD's comments.
I am actually with HYUFD here. The Orthodox and Catholic feud is the narcissism of small differences. They are both the remaining State Church of the Roman Empire. A bit like Italian and Spanish both being legacy vulgar Latin.
Where I don't agree is the conflating of Pauline marriage and Old Testament marriage. Pauline marriage is the Roman view: the strict lifelong monogamy as demanded by Jesus, but with added homophobia. Old Testament marriage allowed hundreds of wives, plus concubines, plus sex slaves. That's worst than Muslim marriage, which is up to four wives plus sex slaves. Ironically the adaption from polygamy to monogamy between the OT and the NT is exactly the mindset of the religious establishment adapting the views of God to contemporary society that the Anglicans are now doing today.
Depends which part, the Ten Commandments forbade adultery
Remember, it's not premarital sex if you never get married.
In the Bible Corinthians opposes sex outside marriage and immorality as does the Koran at 24:2 (including lashings for unmarried fornicators)
Well, if you're (still) talking about gay marriage, don't forget Leviticus 20:13: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death"
Never mind this namby-pamby stuff about no gay marriages in church. Bible-believing Christians should be campaigning for the death penalty for sodomy.
Leviticus is Old Testament rather than New which is the basis of the Christian Bible and certainly nothing Jesus said.
Though of course homosexuality is punishable by death in Afghanistan and some parts of the Middle East even today unfortunately
It's certainly news to me that the Mosaic Law is not part of the Christian Bible, or indeed that Jesus didn't endorse every "jot and tittle" of it.
But perhaps I'm out of date with "traditional Christianity". Things change so fast these days.
Mosaic Law is the Ten Commandments, which does not include the death penalty for homosexuality
Not for the first time, I find the depths of your ignorance simply astounding!
Penny Mordaunt has urged Church of England bishops to allow gay marriage ahead of their historic vote, marking the first intervention by a cabinet minister on the issue.
Ms Mordaunt, Leader of the House of Commons and MP for Portsmouth North, has written to the Bishop of Portsmouth, calling on him to to “recognize the pain and trauma” that failure to recognise same-sex marriage causes to “many LGBT+ people who are left feeling that they are treated as second class citizens within our society”.
Currently, according to canon law, no Church of England minister can bless or marry gay couples. Ms Mordaunt’s interjection marks the first time that a serving cabinet secretary has called for the issue to be reformed within the Church of England. She also warned that if bishops failed to approve same-sex marriage, the issue would only “fester and detract” from any positive contribution from the institution.
Her comments also come as next month, bishops will present their long-awaited findings to the General Synod – the Church’s legislative body – on whether the ban on gay marriage could be overturned.
Given a 2/3 majority for major change is needed in the House of Bishops, House of Clergy and House of Laity, I doubt there will be drastic change at Synod next month.
Evangelicals will block full endorsement of homosexual marriage and liberals will block retaining only a biblical Old Testament, Pauline view of marriage as between a man and woman.
So as with women priests or divorcee marriage I expect a fudge.
Church of England priests who want to bless same sex couples marriages will be able to, those who don't won't be forced to.
There may even be more flying Bishops in the Church of England as there are now for Parishes which don't agree with women priests
The problem, in my view, isn't a fusty church failing to reflect modern values. If Christian values (or values of any other religion) reflect the preferences of aj ineffable God, it seems unlikely to me that that God - who, if we are to believe the church, has been pretty anti-gay for tge last two millenia - has now changed his mind. What seems more likely is that the church doesn't really know, and never knew, what God thinks on any given subject, but knows what society thinks and is desperately trying to reflect that back. So the problem isn't that the church is wrong, it's that we listen to the church at all. We shouldn't be telling it what to think or do, we should be gently removing it from the decision-making process.
Western society you mean. In most of Africa and Asia there is no legal homosexual marriage, same with most of Eastern Europe and Italy and in some parts of North Africa and the Middle East and South Asia homosexuality is still illegal.
For those who are members of churches the position of that Church is significant. If the Church of England as the established church in England allows its clergy to conduct same sex marriage in England if they wish that will be a significant moment (Jesus for example never said anything against homosexual marriage)
But the church in those places is imply reflecting those societies' value back at it too. The problem is not that the church's - any church's views are 'wrong' - it is that the church doesn't have the insight it claims into what 'right' and 'wrong' are: the fact that its views are so mutable, and always seem to match the views of the society it operates within, suggest very strongly that it doesn't 'know' what God thinks, it is just winging it based on what it thinks society wants to hear. It is therefore adding no value to the decision making process. I'm not saying religion should be abolished - I do think it has a value - but that value isn't to the decision making process. Those of us who don't believe should neither tell those who do what they should think, nor pay any mind to what churches think the 'right' course of action is - because they have no more insight than anyone else.
Disestablish. Don't let religious organisations act as state registrars. Obviously let people get married in any religious ceremony they want. Just make them go to the registry office afterwards if they want a state-registered marriage. Of course churches should be allowed to say what they think is right and wrong. (And perhaps they do sometimes have more insight than those who don't think much about what's right and what's wrong. I'll judge that on each issue.)
No because if the Church of England allows homosexual marriages by its priests then the moment you disestablish the Roman Catholic Church, which takes a much harder anti gay marriage line, almost certainly becomes the largest Christian church in England within a decade again.
So you end up with an even harder line national Christian Church than you have now.
I also as a member of the Church of England would object to being forced to go to a registry office service I don't see as validating my marriage as well as the C of E service I do think validated it
But the Catholic Church doesn't become the national church, because: 1) If the CofE is any good, it will retain its numbers. And if it isn't, it doesn't deserve to stay as the 'national church'; but more importantly 2) in the scenario DJ41 describes, we don't have a national church at all. The secular majority simply stop listening to what the church say. The churches are free to say whatever they want, but the rest of us don't have to pay them any heed.
Do you object to registering the birth of your child in a registry office? If not, why would you object to registering your marriage? It only needs to be a 5 minute job telling the state about it. You can still celebrate it, properly, in as much depth as you consider appropriate, in a church, in front of your friends, family and God. A quick trip to Epping Registry office with your new wife when you return from honeymoon to fill in a form doesn't strike me as onerous.
Yes it does. In virtually every other nation where Christians are the majority or plurality religious group, the Roman Catholic Church is the largest religious denomination. The only other exceptions are nations like Denmark where the Lutheran Church of Denmark is the established church or South Africa or Ghana where Pentecostal evangelical churches are the largest Christian group.
If the Church of England was disestablished most of the Anglo Catholics would become Roman Catholic and most of the evangelicals would become Pentecostal or Baptist as is the case in the USA for example where the Episcopalian Church is a smaller largely liberal church with hardline evangelicals and Catholics pushing against abortion and gay marriage.
The latter of course means the Christian churches become increasingly pushing a political agenda and free of being established don't give a toss what the secular majority think. Indeed with immigrants tending to be more socially conservative Christians and Muslims too.
Signing a form to register your child is not the same as having to have a second baptism service at a registry office
Russia?
Well the Eastern Orthodox Church is basically the Roman Catholic Church just with a Patriarch not Pope and even more ornate ceremony
Okaaaayyyyyy....
I clearly missed that time the Catholics allowed lay clergy below the rank of bishop to marry.
Michael Cerularius would be spinning in his grave at HYUFD's comments.
I am actually with HYUFD here. The Orthodox and Catholic feud is the narcissism of small differences. They are both the remaining State Church of the Roman Empire. A bit like Italian and Spanish both being legacy vulgar Latin.
Where I don't agree is the conflating of Pauline marriage and Old Testament marriage. Pauline marriage is the Roman view: the strict lifelong monogamy as demanded by Jesus, but with added homophobia. Old Testament marriage allowed hundreds of wives, plus concubines, plus sex slaves. That's worst than Muslim marriage, which is up to four wives plus sex slaves. Ironically the adaption from polygamy to monogamy between the OT and the NT is exactly the mindset of the religious establishment adapting the views of God to contemporary society that the Anglicans are now doing today.
Depends which part, the Ten Commandments forbade adultery
Remember, it's not premarital sex if you never get married.
In the Bible Corinthians opposes sex outside marriage and immorality as does the Koran at 24:2 (including lashings for unmarried fornicators)
Well, if you're (still) talking about gay marriage, don't forget Leviticus 20:13: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death"
Never mind this namby-pamby stuff about no gay marriages in church. Bible-believing Christians should be campaigning for the death penalty for sodomy.
Leviticus is Old Testament rather than New which is the basis of the Christian Bible and certainly nothing Jesus said.
Though of course homosexuality is punishable by death in Afghanistan and some parts of the Middle East even today unfortunately
It's certainly news to me that the Mosaic Law is not part of the Christian Bible, or indeed that Jesus didn't endorse every "jot and tittle" of it.
But perhaps I'm out of date with "traditional Christianity". Things change so fast these days.
Really? you don't think he would have handled things differently in Matthew 22 if endorsing mosaic law was high on his agenda?
Of course, this suits the Tories as much as it suits Nicola Sturgeon. Starmer will have to give his opinion on the matter.
I will be intrigued to see what he says. It's quite a challenge he's been set here. How can he say 'they are all total fuckwits with no manners cynically misusing rights legislation for their own retarded agendas' without sounding rude?
He'll say he has concerns about the Scottish legislation but that this was not the way to resolve the impasse, without saying how it could have been resolved.
Dad who isn't angry, but disappointed with both of them.
Penny Mordaunt has urged Church of England bishops to allow gay marriage ahead of their historic vote, marking the first intervention by a cabinet minister on the issue.
Ms Mordaunt, Leader of the House of Commons and MP for Portsmouth North, has written to the Bishop of Portsmouth, calling on him to to “recognize the pain and trauma” that failure to recognise same-sex marriage causes to “many LGBT+ people who are left feeling that they are treated as second class citizens within our society”.
Currently, according to canon law, no Church of England minister can bless or marry gay couples. Ms Mordaunt’s interjection marks the first time that a serving cabinet secretary has called for the issue to be reformed within the Church of England. She also warned that if bishops failed to approve same-sex marriage, the issue would only “fester and detract” from any positive contribution from the institution.
Her comments also come as next month, bishops will present their long-awaited findings to the General Synod – the Church’s legislative body – on whether the ban on gay marriage could be overturned.
Given a 2/3 majority for major change is needed in the House of Bishops, House of Clergy and House of Laity, I doubt there will be drastic change at Synod next month.
Evangelicals will block full endorsement of homosexual marriage and liberals will block retaining only a biblical Old Testament, Pauline view of marriage as between a man and woman.
So as with women priests or divorcee marriage I expect a fudge.
Church of England priests who want to bless same sex couples marriages will be able to, those who don't won't be forced to.
There may even be more flying Bishops in the Church of England as there are now for Parishes which don't agree with women priests
The problem, in my view, isn't a fusty church failing to reflect modern values. If Christian values (or values of any other religion) reflect the preferences of aj ineffable God, it seems unlikely to me that that God - who, if we are to believe the church, has been pretty anti-gay for tge last two millenia - has now changed his mind. What seems more likely is that the church doesn't really know, and never knew, what God thinks on any given subject, but knows what society thinks and is desperately trying to reflect that back. So the problem isn't that the church is wrong, it's that we listen to the church at all. We shouldn't be telling it what to think or do, we should be gently removing it from the decision-making process.
Western society you mean. In most of Africa and Asia there is no legal homosexual marriage, same with most of Eastern Europe and Italy and in some parts of North Africa and the Middle East and South Asia homosexuality is still illegal.
For those who are members of churches the position of that Church is significant. If the Church of England as the established church in England allows its clergy to conduct same sex marriage in England if they wish that will be a significant moment (Jesus for example never said anything against homosexual marriage)
But the church in those places is imply reflecting those societies' value back at it too. The problem is not that the church's - any church's views are 'wrong' - it is that the church doesn't have the insight it claims into what 'right' and 'wrong' are: the fact that its views are so mutable, and always seem to match the views of the society it operates within, suggest very strongly that it doesn't 'know' what God thinks, it is just winging it based on what it thinks society wants to hear. It is therefore adding no value to the decision making process. I'm not saying religion should be abolished - I do think it has a value - but that value isn't to the decision making process. Those of us who don't believe should neither tell those who do what they should think, nor pay any mind to what churches think the 'right' course of action is - because they have no more insight than anyone else.
Disestablish. Don't let religious organisations act as state registrars. Obviously let people get married in any religious ceremony they want. Just make them go to the registry office afterwards if they want a state-registered marriage. Of course churches should be allowed to say what they think is right and wrong. (And perhaps they do sometimes have more insight than those who don't think much about what's right and what's wrong. I'll judge that on each issue.)
No because if the Church of England allows homosexual marriages by its priests then the moment you disestablish the Roman Catholic Church, which takes a much harder anti gay marriage line, almost certainly becomes the largest Christian church in England within a decade again.
So you end up with an even harder line national Christian Church than you have now.
I also as a member of the Church of England would object to being forced to go to a registry office service I don't see as validating my marriage as well as the C of E service I do think validated it
But the Catholic Church doesn't become the national church, because: 1) If the CofE is any good, it will retain its numbers. And if it isn't, it doesn't deserve to stay as the 'national church'; but more importantly 2) in the scenario DJ41 describes, we don't have a national church at all. The secular majority simply stop listening to what the church say. The churches are free to say whatever they want, but the rest of us don't have to pay them any heed.
Do you object to registering the birth of your child in a registry office? If not, why would you object to registering your marriage? It only needs to be a 5 minute job telling the state about it. You can still celebrate it, properly, in as much depth as you consider appropriate, in a church, in front of your friends, family and God. A quick trip to Epping Registry office with your new wife when you return from honeymoon to fill in a form doesn't strike me as onerous.
Yes it does. In virtually every other nation where Christians are the majority or plurality religious group, the Roman Catholic Church is the largest religious denomination. The only other exceptions are nations like Denmark where the Lutheran Church of Denmark is the established church or South Africa or Ghana where Pentecostal evangelical churches are the largest Christian group.
If the Church of England was disestablished most of the Anglo Catholics would become Roman Catholic and most of the evangelicals would become Pentecostal or Baptist as is the case in the USA for example where the Episcopalian Church is a smaller largely liberal church with hardline evangelicals and Catholics pushing against abortion and gay marriage.
The latter of course means the Christian churches become increasingly pushing a political agenda and free of being established don't give a toss what the secular majority think. Indeed with immigrants tending to be more socially conservative Christians and Muslims too.
Signing a form to register your child is not the same as having to have a second baptism service at a registry office
Russia?
Well the Eastern Orthodox Church is basically the Roman Catholic Church just with a Patriarch not Pope and even more ornate ceremony
Okaaaayyyyyy....
I clearly missed that time the Catholics allowed lay clergy below the rank of bishop to marry.
Michael Cerularius would be spinning in his grave at HYUFD's comments.
I am actually with HYUFD here. The Orthodox and Catholic feud is the narcissism of small differences. They are both the remaining State Church of the Roman Empire. A bit like Italian and Spanish both being legacy vulgar Latin.
Where I don't agree is the conflating of Pauline marriage and Old Testament marriage. Pauline marriage is the Roman view: the strict lifelong monogamy as demanded by Jesus, but with added homophobia. Old Testament marriage allowed hundreds of wives, plus concubines, plus sex slaves. That's worst than Muslim marriage, which is up to four wives plus sex slaves. Ironically the adaption from polygamy to monogamy between the OT and the NT is exactly the mindset of the religious establishment adapting the views of God to contemporary society that the Anglicans are now doing today.
Depends which part, the Ten Commandments forbade adultery
Remember, it's not premarital sex if you never get married.
In the Bible Corinthians opposes sex outside marriage and immorality as does the Koran at 24:2 (including lashings for unmarried fornicators)
Well, if you're (still) talking about gay marriage, don't forget Leviticus 20:13: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death"
Never mind this namby-pamby stuff about no gay marriages in church. Bible-believing Christians should be campaigning for the death penalty for sodomy.
Leviticus is Old Testament rather than New which is the basis of the Christian Bible and certainly nothing Jesus said.
Though of course homosexuality is punishable by death in Afghanistan and some parts of the Middle East even today unfortunately
So you are saying that the Word of God is a load of old bollocks. We agree again!
Bit of a nailbiter there. Given the current atmosphere that this is a moment for striking, I do wonder what could push the turnout any higher.
Tricky. A lot of teachers only join a union to get access to professional insurance and legal support if their head decides they don't like they way they teach. In a lot of fields, they simply wouldn't be union members.
(There's also something odd with a set of rules where not voting can be more effective opposition than voting against. Had the 9.6% NEU voters sat on their hands instead, the ballot would have failed to pass the turnout rule.)
Talking of which:
Also breaking: NAHTnews ballot has not reached turnout threshold
In England 64% of those who voted supported strikes, while 87% voted in favour of action short of a strike.
Look at the stats. Andz think if your statement makes sense.
If you think that the London teachers are (a) so frequent and (b) so much better paid as to bring the average to 102K then maybe you are counting to a different base. Base 7 and a half, perhaps?
Plus you're flat wrong about the 400K. Read your source again.
The head of an academy trust certainly earnt over £400k and a number of secondary school headteachers earnt over £200k and salaries that would be similar to those earnt by a partner in a corporate law firm
Head of an academy trust = company chief exec, NOT a headmaster. Read the article yet again. "The top earner by far, however, is Sir Dan Moynihan, chief executive of the Harris Federation, which runs 48 primary and secondary academies. He has seen his salary increase to between £455,000 and £460,000 [...]"
And remember - you claimed ""Given the average secondary school headteacher earns £102,000 a year".
They do at the top end of the scale
Oh, does the word "average" have a revolutionary new meaning in the Conservative Club at Epping? Or are you just not interested in the concept of documentable fact?
At the top end of the scale secondary headteachers have a range from £86k to £117k, so an effective average of £100k yes. Paid for by taxpayers
Penny Mordaunt has urged Church of England bishops to allow gay marriage ahead of their historic vote, marking the first intervention by a cabinet minister on the issue.
Ms Mordaunt, Leader of the House of Commons and MP for Portsmouth North, has written to the Bishop of Portsmouth, calling on him to to “recognize the pain and trauma” that failure to recognise same-sex marriage causes to “many LGBT+ people who are left feeling that they are treated as second class citizens within our society”.
Currently, according to canon law, no Church of England minister can bless or marry gay couples. Ms Mordaunt’s interjection marks the first time that a serving cabinet secretary has called for the issue to be reformed within the Church of England. She also warned that if bishops failed to approve same-sex marriage, the issue would only “fester and detract” from any positive contribution from the institution.
Her comments also come as next month, bishops will present their long-awaited findings to the General Synod – the Church’s legislative body – on whether the ban on gay marriage could be overturned.
Given a 2/3 majority for major change is needed in the House of Bishops, House of Clergy and House of Laity, I doubt there will be drastic change at Synod next month.
Evangelicals will block full endorsement of homosexual marriage and liberals will block retaining only a biblical Old Testament, Pauline view of marriage as between a man and woman.
So as with women priests or divorcee marriage I expect a fudge.
Church of England priests who want to bless same sex couples marriages will be able to, those who don't won't be forced to.
There may even be more flying Bishops in the Church of England as there are now for Parishes which don't agree with women priests
The problem, in my view, isn't a fusty church failing to reflect modern values. If Christian values (or values of any other religion) reflect the preferences of aj ineffable God, it seems unlikely to me that that God - who, if we are to believe the church, has been pretty anti-gay for tge last two millenia - has now changed his mind. What seems more likely is that the church doesn't really know, and never knew, what God thinks on any given subject, but knows what society thinks and is desperately trying to reflect that back. So the problem isn't that the church is wrong, it's that we listen to the church at all. We shouldn't be telling it what to think or do, we should be gently removing it from the decision-making process.
Western society you mean. In most of Africa and Asia there is no legal homosexual marriage, same with most of Eastern Europe and Italy and in some parts of North Africa and the Middle East and South Asia homosexuality is still illegal.
For those who are members of churches the position of that Church is significant. If the Church of England as the established church in England allows its clergy to conduct same sex marriage in England if they wish that will be a significant moment (Jesus for example never said anything against homosexual marriage)
But the church in those places is imply reflecting those societies' value back at it too. The problem is not that the church's - any church's views are 'wrong' - it is that the church doesn't have the insight it claims into what 'right' and 'wrong' are: the fact that its views are so mutable, and always seem to match the views of the society it operates within, suggest very strongly that it doesn't 'know' what God thinks, it is just winging it based on what it thinks society wants to hear. It is therefore adding no value to the decision making process. I'm not saying religion should be abolished - I do think it has a value - but that value isn't to the decision making process. Those of us who don't believe should neither tell those who do what they should think, nor pay any mind to what churches think the 'right' course of action is - because they have no more insight than anyone else.
Disestablish. Don't let religious organisations act as state registrars. Obviously let people get married in any religious ceremony they want. Just make them go to the registry office afterwards if they want a state-registered marriage. Of course churches should be allowed to say what they think is right and wrong. (And perhaps they do sometimes have more insight than those who don't think much about what's right and what's wrong. I'll judge that on each issue.)
No because if the Church of England allows homosexual marriages by its priests then the moment you disestablish the Roman Catholic Church, which takes a much harder anti gay marriage line, almost certainly becomes the largest Christian church in England within a decade again.
So you end up with an even harder line national Christian Church than you have now.
I also as a member of the Church of England would object to being forced to go to a registry office service I don't see as validating my marriage as well as the C of E service I do think validated it
But the Catholic Church doesn't become the national church, because: 1) If the CofE is any good, it will retain its numbers. And if it isn't, it doesn't deserve to stay as the 'national church'; but more importantly 2) in the scenario DJ41 describes, we don't have a national church at all. The secular majority simply stop listening to what the church say. The churches are free to say whatever they want, but the rest of us don't have to pay them any heed.
Do you object to registering the birth of your child in a registry office? If not, why would you object to registering your marriage? It only needs to be a 5 minute job telling the state about it. You can still celebrate it, properly, in as much depth as you consider appropriate, in a church, in front of your friends, family and God. A quick trip to Epping Registry office with your new wife when you return from honeymoon to fill in a form doesn't strike me as onerous.
Yes it does. In virtually every other nation where Christians are the majority or plurality religious group, the Roman Catholic Church is the largest religious denomination. The only other exceptions are nations like Denmark where the Lutheran Church of Denmark is the established church or South Africa or Ghana where Pentecostal evangelical churches are the largest Christian group.
If the Church of England was disestablished most of the Anglo Catholics would become Roman Catholic and most of the evangelicals would become Pentecostal or Baptist as is the case in the USA for example where the Episcopalian Church is a smaller largely liberal church with hardline evangelicals and Catholics pushing against abortion and gay marriage.
The latter of course means the Christian churches become increasingly pushing a political agenda and free of being established don't give a toss what the secular majority think. Indeed with immigrants tending to be more socially conservative Christians and Muslims too.
Signing a form to register your child is not the same as having to have a second baptism service at a registry office
Russia?
Well the Eastern Orthodox Church is basically the Roman Catholic Church just with a Patriarch not Pope and even more ornate ceremony
Okaaaayyyyyy....
I clearly missed that time the Catholics allowed lay clergy below the rank of bishop to marry.
Michael Cerularius would be spinning in his grave at HYUFD's comments.
I am actually with HYUFD here. The Orthodox and Catholic feud is the narcissism of small differences. They are both the remaining State Church of the Roman Empire. A bit like Italian and Spanish both being legacy vulgar Latin.
Where I don't agree is the conflating of Pauline marriage and Old Testament marriage. Pauline marriage is the Roman view: the strict lifelong monogamy as demanded by Jesus, but with added homophobia. Old Testament marriage allowed hundreds of wives, plus concubines, plus sex slaves. That's worst than Muslim marriage, which is up to four wives plus sex slaves. Ironically the adaption from polygamy to monogamy between the OT and the NT is exactly the mindset of the religious establishment adapting the views of God to contemporary society that the Anglicans are now doing today.
Depends which part, the Ten Commandments forbade adultery
Remember, it's not premarital sex if you never get married.
In the Bible Corinthians opposes sex outside marriage and immorality as does the Koran at 24:2 (including lashings for unmarried fornicators)
Well, if you're (still) talking about gay marriage, don't forget Leviticus 20:13: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death"
Never mind this namby-pamby stuff about no gay marriages in church. Bible-believing Christians should be campaigning for the death penalty for sodomy.
Leviticus is Old Testament rather than New which is the basis of the Christian Bible and certainly nothing Jesus said.
Though of course homosexuality is punishable by death in Afghanistan and some parts of the Middle East even today unfortunately
It's certainly news to me that the Mosaic Law is not part of the Christian Bible, or indeed that Jesus didn't endorse every "jot and tittle" of it.
But perhaps I'm out of date with "traditional Christianity". Things change so fast these days.
Mosaic Law is the Ten Commandments, which does not include the death penalty for homosexuality
Not for the first time, I find the depths of your ignorance simply astounding!
And yet you continue to hold forth.
And I see you've now silently edited your nonsense about "Mosaic Law is the Ten Commandments" to "Mosaic Law for most Christians is the Ten Commandments".
Penny Mordaunt has urged Church of England bishops to allow gay marriage ahead of their historic vote, marking the first intervention by a cabinet minister on the issue.
Ms Mordaunt, Leader of the House of Commons and MP for Portsmouth North, has written to the Bishop of Portsmouth, calling on him to to “recognize the pain and trauma” that failure to recognise same-sex marriage causes to “many LGBT+ people who are left feeling that they are treated as second class citizens within our society”.
Currently, according to canon law, no Church of England minister can bless or marry gay couples. Ms Mordaunt’s interjection marks the first time that a serving cabinet secretary has called for the issue to be reformed within the Church of England. She also warned that if bishops failed to approve same-sex marriage, the issue would only “fester and detract” from any positive contribution from the institution.
Her comments also come as next month, bishops will present their long-awaited findings to the General Synod – the Church’s legislative body – on whether the ban on gay marriage could be overturned.
Given a 2/3 majority for major change is needed in the House of Bishops, House of Clergy and House of Laity, I doubt there will be drastic change at Synod next month.
Evangelicals will block full endorsement of homosexual marriage and liberals will block retaining only a biblical Old Testament, Pauline view of marriage as between a man and woman.
So as with women priests or divorcee marriage I expect a fudge.
Church of England priests who want to bless same sex couples marriages will be able to, those who don't won't be forced to.
There may even be more flying Bishops in the Church of England as there are now for Parishes which don't agree with women priests
The problem, in my view, isn't a fusty church failing to reflect modern values. If Christian values (or values of any other religion) reflect the preferences of aj ineffable God, it seems unlikely to me that that God - who, if we are to believe the church, has been pretty anti-gay for tge last two millenia - has now changed his mind. What seems more likely is that the church doesn't really know, and never knew, what God thinks on any given subject, but knows what society thinks and is desperately trying to reflect that back. So the problem isn't that the church is wrong, it's that we listen to the church at all. We shouldn't be telling it what to think or do, we should be gently removing it from the decision-making process.
Western society you mean. In most of Africa and Asia there is no legal homosexual marriage, same with most of Eastern Europe and Italy and in some parts of North Africa and the Middle East and South Asia homosexuality is still illegal.
For those who are members of churches the position of that Church is significant. If the Church of England as the established church in England allows its clergy to conduct same sex marriage in England if they wish that will be a significant moment (Jesus for example never said anything against homosexual marriage)
But the church in those places is imply reflecting those societies' value back at it too. The problem is not that the church's - any church's views are 'wrong' - it is that the church doesn't have the insight it claims into what 'right' and 'wrong' are: the fact that its views are so mutable, and always seem to match the views of the society it operates within, suggest very strongly that it doesn't 'know' what God thinks, it is just winging it based on what it thinks society wants to hear. It is therefore adding no value to the decision making process. I'm not saying religion should be abolished - I do think it has a value - but that value isn't to the decision making process. Those of us who don't believe should neither tell those who do what they should think, nor pay any mind to what churches think the 'right' course of action is - because they have no more insight than anyone else.
Disestablish. Don't let religious organisations act as state registrars. Obviously let people get married in any religious ceremony they want. Just make them go to the registry office afterwards if they want a state-registered marriage. Of course churches should be allowed to say what they think is right and wrong. (And perhaps they do sometimes have more insight than those who don't think much about what's right and what's wrong. I'll judge that on each issue.)
No because if the Church of England allows homosexual marriages by its priests then the moment you disestablish the Roman Catholic Church, which takes a much harder anti gay marriage line, almost certainly becomes the largest Christian church in England within a decade again.
So you end up with an even harder line national Christian Church than you have now.
I also as a member of the Church of England would object to being forced to go to a registry office service I don't see as validating my marriage as well as the C of E service I do think validated it
But the Catholic Church doesn't become the national church, because: 1) If the CofE is any good, it will retain its numbers. And if it isn't, it doesn't deserve to stay as the 'national church'; but more importantly 2) in the scenario DJ41 describes, we don't have a national church at all. The secular majority simply stop listening to what the church say. The churches are free to say whatever they want, but the rest of us don't have to pay them any heed.
Do you object to registering the birth of your child in a registry office? If not, why would you object to registering your marriage? It only needs to be a 5 minute job telling the state about it. You can still celebrate it, properly, in as much depth as you consider appropriate, in a church, in front of your friends, family and God. A quick trip to Epping Registry office with your new wife when you return from honeymoon to fill in a form doesn't strike me as onerous.
Yes it does. In virtually every other nation where Christians are the majority or plurality religious group, the Roman Catholic Church is the largest religious denomination. The only other exceptions are nations like Denmark where the Lutheran Church of Denmark is the established church or South Africa or Ghana where Pentecostal evangelical churches are the largest Christian group.
If the Church of England was disestablished most of the Anglo Catholics would become Roman Catholic and most of the evangelicals would become Pentecostal or Baptist as is the case in the USA for example where the Episcopalian Church is a smaller largely liberal church with hardline evangelicals and Catholics pushing against abortion and gay marriage.
The latter of course means the Christian churches become increasingly pushing a political agenda and free of being established don't give a toss what the secular majority think. Indeed with immigrants tending to be more socially conservative Christians and Muslims too.
Signing a form to register your child is not the same as having to have a second baptism service at a registry office
Russia?
Well the Eastern Orthodox Church is basically the Roman Catholic Church just with a Patriarch not Pope and even more ornate ceremony
Okaaaayyyyyy....
I clearly missed that time the Catholics allowed lay clergy below the rank of bishop to marry.
Michael Cerularius would be spinning in his grave at HYUFD's comments.
I am actually with HYUFD here. The Orthodox and Catholic feud is the narcissism of small differences. They are both the remaining State Church of the Roman Empire. A bit like Italian and Spanish both being legacy vulgar Latin.
Where I don't agree is the conflating of Pauline marriage and Old Testament marriage. Pauline marriage is the Roman view: the strict lifelong monogamy as demanded by Jesus, but with added homophobia. Old Testament marriage allowed hundreds of wives, plus concubines, plus sex slaves. That's worst than Muslim marriage, which is up to four wives plus sex slaves. Ironically the adaption from polygamy to monogamy between the OT and the NT is exactly the mindset of the religious establishment adapting the views of God to contemporary society that the Anglicans are now doing today.
Depends which part, the Ten Commandments forbade adultery
Remember, it's not premarital sex if you never get married.
In the Bible Corinthians opposes sex outside marriage and immorality as does the Koran at 24:2 (including lashings for unmarried fornicators)
Well, if you're (still) talking about gay marriage, don't forget Leviticus 20:13: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death"
Never mind this namby-pamby stuff about no gay marriages in church. Bible-believing Christians should be campaigning for the death penalty for sodomy.
Leviticus is Old Testament rather than New which is the basis of the Christian Bible and certainly nothing Jesus said.
Though of course homosexuality is punishable by death in Afghanistan and some parts of the Middle East even today unfortunately
So you are saying that the Word of God is a load of old bollocks. We agree again!
Penny Mordaunt has urged Church of England bishops to allow gay marriage ahead of their historic vote, marking the first intervention by a cabinet minister on the issue.
Ms Mordaunt, Leader of the House of Commons and MP for Portsmouth North, has written to the Bishop of Portsmouth, calling on him to to “recognize the pain and trauma” that failure to recognise same-sex marriage causes to “many LGBT+ people who are left feeling that they are treated as second class citizens within our society”.
Currently, according to canon law, no Church of England minister can bless or marry gay couples. Ms Mordaunt’s interjection marks the first time that a serving cabinet secretary has called for the issue to be reformed within the Church of England. She also warned that if bishops failed to approve same-sex marriage, the issue would only “fester and detract” from any positive contribution from the institution.
Her comments also come as next month, bishops will present their long-awaited findings to the General Synod – the Church’s legislative body – on whether the ban on gay marriage could be overturned.
Given a 2/3 majority for major change is needed in the House of Bishops, House of Clergy and House of Laity, I doubt there will be drastic change at Synod next month.
Evangelicals will block full endorsement of homosexual marriage and liberals will block retaining only a biblical Old Testament, Pauline view of marriage as between a man and woman.
So as with women priests or divorcee marriage I expect a fudge.
Church of England priests who want to bless same sex couples marriages will be able to, those who don't won't be forced to.
There may even be more flying Bishops in the Church of England as there are now for Parishes which don't agree with women priests
The problem, in my view, isn't a fusty church failing to reflect modern values. If Christian values (or values of any other religion) reflect the preferences of aj ineffable God, it seems unlikely to me that that God - who, if we are to believe the church, has been pretty anti-gay for tge last two millenia - has now changed his mind. What seems more likely is that the church doesn't really know, and never knew, what God thinks on any given subject, but knows what society thinks and is desperately trying to reflect that back. So the problem isn't that the church is wrong, it's that we listen to the church at all. We shouldn't be telling it what to think or do, we should be gently removing it from the decision-making process.
Western society you mean. In most of Africa and Asia there is no legal homosexual marriage, same with most of Eastern Europe and Italy and in some parts of North Africa and the Middle East and South Asia homosexuality is still illegal.
For those who are members of churches the position of that Church is significant. If the Church of England as the established church in England allows its clergy to conduct same sex marriage in England if they wish that will be a significant moment (Jesus for example never said anything against homosexual marriage)
But the church in those places is imply reflecting those societies' value back at it too. The problem is not that the church's - any church's views are 'wrong' - it is that the church doesn't have the insight it claims into what 'right' and 'wrong' are: the fact that its views are so mutable, and always seem to match the views of the society it operates within, suggest very strongly that it doesn't 'know' what God thinks, it is just winging it based on what it thinks society wants to hear. It is therefore adding no value to the decision making process. I'm not saying religion should be abolished - I do think it has a value - but that value isn't to the decision making process. Those of us who don't believe should neither tell those who do what they should think, nor pay any mind to what churches think the 'right' course of action is - because they have no more insight than anyone else.
Disestablish. Don't let religious organisations act as state registrars. Obviously let people get married in any religious ceremony they want. Just make them go to the registry office afterwards if they want a state-registered marriage. Of course churches should be allowed to say what they think is right and wrong. (And perhaps they do sometimes have more insight than those who don't think much about what's right and what's wrong. I'll judge that on each issue.)
No because if the Church of England allows homosexual marriages by its priests then the moment you disestablish the Roman Catholic Church, which takes a much harder anti gay marriage line, almost certainly becomes the largest Christian church in England within a decade again.
So you end up with an even harder line national Christian Church than you have now.
I also as a member of the Church of England would object to being forced to go to a registry office service I don't see as validating my marriage as well as the C of E service I do think validated it
But the Catholic Church doesn't become the national church, because: 1) If the CofE is any good, it will retain its numbers. And if it isn't, it doesn't deserve to stay as the 'national church'; but more importantly 2) in the scenario DJ41 describes, we don't have a national church at all. The secular majority simply stop listening to what the church say. The churches are free to say whatever they want, but the rest of us don't have to pay them any heed.
Do you object to registering the birth of your child in a registry office? If not, why would you object to registering your marriage? It only needs to be a 5 minute job telling the state about it. You can still celebrate it, properly, in as much depth as you consider appropriate, in a church, in front of your friends, family and God. A quick trip to Epping Registry office with your new wife when you return from honeymoon to fill in a form doesn't strike me as onerous.
Yes it does. In virtually every other nation where Christians are the majority or plurality religious group, the Roman Catholic Church is the largest religious denomination. The only other exceptions are nations like Denmark where the Lutheran Church of Denmark is the established church or South Africa or Ghana where Pentecostal evangelical churches are the largest Christian group.
If the Church of England was disestablished most of the Anglo Catholics would become Roman Catholic and most of the evangelicals would become Pentecostal or Baptist as is the case in the USA for example where the Episcopalian Church is a smaller largely liberal church with hardline evangelicals and Catholics pushing against abortion and gay marriage.
The latter of course means the Christian churches become increasingly pushing a political agenda and free of being established don't give a toss what the secular majority think. Indeed with immigrants tending to be more socially conservative Christians and Muslims too.
Signing a form to register your child is not the same as having to have a second baptism service at a registry office
Russia?
Well the Eastern Orthodox Church is basically the Roman Catholic Church just with a Patriarch not Pope and even more ornate ceremony
Okaaaayyyyyy....
I clearly missed that time the Catholics allowed lay clergy below the rank of bishop to marry.
Michael Cerularius would be spinning in his grave at HYUFD's comments.
I am actually with HYUFD here. The Orthodox and Catholic feud is the narcissism of small differences. They are both the remaining State Church of the Roman Empire. A bit like Italian and Spanish both being legacy vulgar Latin.
Where I don't agree is the conflating of Pauline marriage and Old Testament marriage. Pauline marriage is the Roman view: the strict lifelong monogamy as demanded by Jesus, but with added homophobia. Old Testament marriage allowed hundreds of wives, plus concubines, plus sex slaves. That's worst than Muslim marriage, which is up to four wives plus sex slaves. Ironically the adaption from polygamy to monogamy between the OT and the NT is exactly the mindset of the religious establishment adapting the views of God to contemporary society that the Anglicans are now doing today.
Depends which part, the Ten Commandments forbade adultery
Remember, it's not premarital sex if you never get married.
In the Bible Corinthians opposes sex outside marriage and immorality as does the Koran at 24:2 (including lashings for unmarried fornicators)
Well, if you're (still) talking about gay marriage, don't forget Leviticus 20:13: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death"
Never mind this namby-pamby stuff about no gay marriages in church. Bible-believing Christians should be campaigning for the death penalty for sodomy.
Leviticus is Old Testament rather than New which is the basis of the Christian Bible and certainly nothing Jesus said.
Though of course homosexuality is punishable by death in Afghanistan and some parts of the Middle East even today unfortunately
It's certainly news to me that the Mosaic Law is not part of the Christian Bible, or indeed that Jesus didn't endorse every "jot and tittle" of it.
But perhaps I'm out of date with "traditional Christianity". Things change so fast these days.
Mosaic Law is the Ten Commandments, which does not include the death penalty for homosexuality
Not for the first time, I find the depths of your ignorance simply astounding!
And yet you continue to hold forth.
Nothing ignorant about it. A statement in Leviticus is not the Old Testament law of the 10 Commandments Jesus once mentioned he had come to fulfil. The words of Jesus not the Old Testament of course being the basis of Christianity.
Otherwise you wouldn't be Christian you would be Jewish, or given the overlap of much of the Old Testament with the Koran, Muslim.
You can of course reintroduce the death penalty for homosexuality and fornicators if that is what you demand given Christians and Muslims are still the majority of the UK population
Penny Mordaunt has urged Church of England bishops to allow gay marriage ahead of their historic vote, marking the first intervention by a cabinet minister on the issue.
Ms Mordaunt, Leader of the House of Commons and MP for Portsmouth North, has written to the Bishop of Portsmouth, calling on him to to “recognize the pain and trauma” that failure to recognise same-sex marriage causes to “many LGBT+ people who are left feeling that they are treated as second class citizens within our society”.
Currently, according to canon law, no Church of England minister can bless or marry gay couples. Ms Mordaunt’s interjection marks the first time that a serving cabinet secretary has called for the issue to be reformed within the Church of England. She also warned that if bishops failed to approve same-sex marriage, the issue would only “fester and detract” from any positive contribution from the institution.
Her comments also come as next month, bishops will present their long-awaited findings to the General Synod – the Church’s legislative body – on whether the ban on gay marriage could be overturned.
Given a 2/3 majority for major change is needed in the House of Bishops, House of Clergy and House of Laity, I doubt there will be drastic change at Synod next month.
Evangelicals will block full endorsement of homosexual marriage and liberals will block retaining only a biblical Old Testament, Pauline view of marriage as between a man and woman.
So as with women priests or divorcee marriage I expect a fudge.
Church of England priests who want to bless same sex couples marriages will be able to, those who don't won't be forced to.
There may even be more flying Bishops in the Church of England as there are now for Parishes which don't agree with women priests
The problem, in my view, isn't a fusty church failing to reflect modern values. If Christian values (or values of any other religion) reflect the preferences of aj ineffable God, it seems unlikely to me that that God - who, if we are to believe the church, has been pretty anti-gay for tge last two millenia - has now changed his mind. What seems more likely is that the church doesn't really know, and never knew, what God thinks on any given subject, but knows what society thinks and is desperately trying to reflect that back. So the problem isn't that the church is wrong, it's that we listen to the church at all. We shouldn't be telling it what to think or do, we should be gently removing it from the decision-making process.
Western society you mean. In most of Africa and Asia there is no legal homosexual marriage, same with most of Eastern Europe and Italy and in some parts of North Africa and the Middle East and South Asia homosexuality is still illegal.
For those who are members of churches the position of that Church is significant. If the Church of England as the established church in England allows its clergy to conduct same sex marriage in England if they wish that will be a significant moment (Jesus for example never said anything against homosexual marriage)
But the church in those places is imply reflecting those societies' value back at it too. The problem is not that the church's - any church's views are 'wrong' - it is that the church doesn't have the insight it claims into what 'right' and 'wrong' are: the fact that its views are so mutable, and always seem to match the views of the society it operates within, suggest very strongly that it doesn't 'know' what God thinks, it is just winging it based on what it thinks society wants to hear. It is therefore adding no value to the decision making process. I'm not saying religion should be abolished - I do think it has a value - but that value isn't to the decision making process. Those of us who don't believe should neither tell those who do what they should think, nor pay any mind to what churches think the 'right' course of action is - because they have no more insight than anyone else.
Disestablish. Don't let religious organisations act as state registrars. Obviously let people get married in any religious ceremony they want. Just make them go to the registry office afterwards if they want a state-registered marriage. Of course churches should be allowed to say what they think is right and wrong. (And perhaps they do sometimes have more insight than those who don't think much about what's right and what's wrong. I'll judge that on each issue.)
No because if the Church of England allows homosexual marriages by its priests then the moment you disestablish the Roman Catholic Church, which takes a much harder anti gay marriage line, almost certainly becomes the largest Christian church in England within a decade again.
So you end up with an even harder line national Christian Church than you have now.
I also as a member of the Church of England would object to being forced to go to a registry office service I don't see as validating my marriage as well as the C of E service I do think validated it
But the Catholic Church doesn't become the national church, because: 1) If the CofE is any good, it will retain its numbers. And if it isn't, it doesn't deserve to stay as the 'national church'; but more importantly 2) in the scenario DJ41 describes, we don't have a national church at all. The secular majority simply stop listening to what the church say. The churches are free to say whatever they want, but the rest of us don't have to pay them any heed.
Do you object to registering the birth of your child in a registry office? If not, why would you object to registering your marriage? It only needs to be a 5 minute job telling the state about it. You can still celebrate it, properly, in as much depth as you consider appropriate, in a church, in front of your friends, family and God. A quick trip to Epping Registry office with your new wife when you return from honeymoon to fill in a form doesn't strike me as onerous.
Yes it does. In virtually every other nation where Christians are the majority or plurality religious group, the Roman Catholic Church is the largest religious denomination. The only other exceptions are nations like Denmark where the Lutheran Church of Denmark is the established church or South Africa or Ghana where Pentecostal evangelical churches are the largest Christian group.
If the Church of England was disestablished most of the Anglo Catholics would become Roman Catholic and most of the evangelicals would become Pentecostal or Baptist as is the case in the USA for example where the Episcopalian Church is a smaller largely liberal church with hardline evangelicals and Catholics pushing against abortion and gay marriage.
The latter of course means the Christian churches become increasingly pushing a political agenda and free of being established don't give a toss what the secular majority think. Indeed with immigrants tending to be more socially conservative Christians and Muslims too.
Signing a form to register your child is not the same as having to have a second baptism service at a registry office
Russia?
Well the Eastern Orthodox Church is basically the Roman Catholic Church just with a Patriarch not Pope and even more ornate ceremony
Okaaaayyyyyy....
I clearly missed that time the Catholics allowed lay clergy below the rank of bishop to marry.
Michael Cerularius would be spinning in his grave at HYUFD's comments.
I am actually with HYUFD here. The Orthodox and Catholic feud is the narcissism of small differences. They are both the remaining State Church of the Roman Empire. A bit like Italian and Spanish both being legacy vulgar Latin.
Where I don't agree is the conflating of Pauline marriage and Old Testament marriage. Pauline marriage is the Roman view: the strict lifelong monogamy as demanded by Jesus, but with added homophobia. Old Testament marriage allowed hundreds of wives, plus concubines, plus sex slaves. That's worst than Muslim marriage, which is up to four wives plus sex slaves. Ironically the adaption from polygamy to monogamy between the OT and the NT is exactly the mindset of the religious establishment adapting the views of God to contemporary society that the Anglicans are now doing today.
Depends which part, the Ten Commandments forbade adultery
Remember, it's not premarital sex if you never get married.
In the Bible Corinthians opposes sex outside marriage and immorality as does the Koran at 24:2 (including lashings for unmarried fornicators)
Well, if you're (still) talking about gay marriage, don't forget Leviticus 20:13: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death"
Never mind this namby-pamby stuff about no gay marriages in church. Bible-believing Christians should be campaigning for the death penalty for sodomy.
Leviticus is Old Testament rather than New which is the basis of the Christian Bible and certainly nothing Jesus said.
Though of course homosexuality is punishable by death in Afghanistan and some parts of the Middle East even today unfortunately
It's certainly news to me that the Mosaic Law is not part of the Christian Bible, or indeed that Jesus didn't endorse every "jot and tittle" of it.
But perhaps I'm out of date with "traditional Christianity". Things change so fast these days.
Really? you don't think he would have handled things differently in Matthew 22 if endorsing mosaic law was high on his agenda?
Please don't try to offload the task of reconciling the contradictions in your sacred texts on to others!
Penny Mordaunt has urged Church of England bishops to allow gay marriage ahead of their historic vote, marking the first intervention by a cabinet minister on the issue.
Ms Mordaunt, Leader of the House of Commons and MP for Portsmouth North, has written to the Bishop of Portsmouth, calling on him to to “recognize the pain and trauma” that failure to recognise same-sex marriage causes to “many LGBT+ people who are left feeling that they are treated as second class citizens within our society”.
Currently, according to canon law, no Church of England minister can bless or marry gay couples. Ms Mordaunt’s interjection marks the first time that a serving cabinet secretary has called for the issue to be reformed within the Church of England. She also warned that if bishops failed to approve same-sex marriage, the issue would only “fester and detract” from any positive contribution from the institution.
Her comments also come as next month, bishops will present their long-awaited findings to the General Synod – the Church’s legislative body – on whether the ban on gay marriage could be overturned.
Given a 2/3 majority for major change is needed in the House of Bishops, House of Clergy and House of Laity, I doubt there will be drastic change at Synod next month.
Evangelicals will block full endorsement of homosexual marriage and liberals will block retaining only a biblical Old Testament, Pauline view of marriage as between a man and woman.
So as with women priests or divorcee marriage I expect a fudge.
Church of England priests who want to bless same sex couples marriages will be able to, those who don't won't be forced to.
There may even be more flying Bishops in the Church of England as there are now for Parishes which don't agree with women priests
The problem, in my view, isn't a fusty church failing to reflect modern values. If Christian values (or values of any other religion) reflect the preferences of aj ineffable God, it seems unlikely to me that that God - who, if we are to believe the church, has been pretty anti-gay for tge last two millenia - has now changed his mind. What seems more likely is that the church doesn't really know, and never knew, what God thinks on any given subject, but knows what society thinks and is desperately trying to reflect that back. So the problem isn't that the church is wrong, it's that we listen to the church at all. We shouldn't be telling it what to think or do, we should be gently removing it from the decision-making process.
Western society you mean. In most of Africa and Asia there is no legal homosexual marriage, same with most of Eastern Europe and Italy and in some parts of North Africa and the Middle East and South Asia homosexuality is still illegal.
For those who are members of churches the position of that Church is significant. If the Church of England as the established church in England allows its clergy to conduct same sex marriage in England if they wish that will be a significant moment (Jesus for example never said anything against homosexual marriage)
But the church in those places is imply reflecting those societies' value back at it too. The problem is not that the church's - any church's views are 'wrong' - it is that the church doesn't have the insight it claims into what 'right' and 'wrong' are: the fact that its views are so mutable, and always seem to match the views of the society it operates within, suggest very strongly that it doesn't 'know' what God thinks, it is just winging it based on what it thinks society wants to hear. It is therefore adding no value to the decision making process. I'm not saying religion should be abolished - I do think it has a value - but that value isn't to the decision making process. Those of us who don't believe should neither tell those who do what they should think, nor pay any mind to what churches think the 'right' course of action is - because they have no more insight than anyone else.
Disestablish. Don't let religious organisations act as state registrars. Obviously let people get married in any religious ceremony they want. Just make them go to the registry office afterwards if they want a state-registered marriage. Of course churches should be allowed to say what they think is right and wrong. (And perhaps they do sometimes have more insight than those who don't think much about what's right and what's wrong. I'll judge that on each issue.)
No because if the Church of England allows homosexual marriages by its priests then the moment you disestablish the Roman Catholic Church, which takes a much harder anti gay marriage line, almost certainly becomes the largest Christian church in England within a decade again.
So you end up with an even harder line national Christian Church than you have now.
I also as a member of the Church of England would object to being forced to go to a registry office service I don't see as validating my marriage as well as the C of E service I do think validated it
But the Catholic Church doesn't become the national church, because: 1) If the CofE is any good, it will retain its numbers. And if it isn't, it doesn't deserve to stay as the 'national church'; but more importantly 2) in the scenario DJ41 describes, we don't have a national church at all. The secular majority simply stop listening to what the church say. The churches are free to say whatever they want, but the rest of us don't have to pay them any heed.
Do you object to registering the birth of your child in a registry office? If not, why would you object to registering your marriage? It only needs to be a 5 minute job telling the state about it. You can still celebrate it, properly, in as much depth as you consider appropriate, in a church, in front of your friends, family and God. A quick trip to Epping Registry office with your new wife when you return from honeymoon to fill in a form doesn't strike me as onerous.
Yes it does. In virtually every other nation where Christians are the majority or plurality religious group, the Roman Catholic Church is the largest religious denomination. The only other exceptions are nations like Denmark where the Lutheran Church of Denmark is the established church or South Africa or Ghana where Pentecostal evangelical churches are the largest Christian group.
If the Church of England was disestablished most of the Anglo Catholics would become Roman Catholic and most of the evangelicals would become Pentecostal or Baptist as is the case in the USA for example where the Episcopalian Church is a smaller largely liberal church with hardline evangelicals and Catholics pushing against abortion and gay marriage.
The latter of course means the Christian churches become increasingly pushing a political agenda and free of being established don't give a toss what the secular majority think. Indeed with immigrants tending to be more socially conservative Christians and Muslims too.
Signing a form to register your child is not the same as having to have a second baptism service at a registry office
Russia?
Well the Eastern Orthodox Church is basically the Roman Catholic Church just with a Patriarch not Pope and even more ornate ceremony
Okaaaayyyyyy....
I clearly missed that time the Catholics allowed lay clergy below the rank of bishop to marry.
Michael Cerularius would be spinning in his grave at HYUFD's comments.
I am actually with HYUFD here. The Orthodox and Catholic feud is the narcissism of small differences. They are both the remaining State Church of the Roman Empire. A bit like Italian and Spanish both being legacy vulgar Latin.
Where I don't agree is the conflating of Pauline marriage and Old Testament marriage. Pauline marriage is the Roman view: the strict lifelong monogamy as demanded by Jesus, but with added homophobia. Old Testament marriage allowed hundreds of wives, plus concubines, plus sex slaves. That's worst than Muslim marriage, which is up to four wives plus sex slaves. Ironically the adaption from polygamy to monogamy between the OT and the NT is exactly the mindset of the religious establishment adapting the views of God to contemporary society that the Anglicans are now doing today.
Depends which part, the Ten Commandments forbade adultery
Remember, it's not premarital sex if you never get married.
In the Bible Corinthians opposes sex outside marriage and immorality as does the Koran at 24:2 (including lashings for unmarried fornicators)
Well, if you're (still) talking about gay marriage, don't forget Leviticus 20:13: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death"
Never mind this namby-pamby stuff about no gay marriages in church. Bible-believing Christians should be campaigning for the death penalty for sodomy.
Leviticus is Old Testament rather than New which is the basis of the Christian Bible and certainly nothing Jesus said.
Though of course homosexuality is punishable by death in Afghanistan and some parts of the Middle East even today unfortunately
It's certainly news to me that the Mosaic Law is not part of the Christian Bible, or indeed that Jesus didn't endorse every "jot and tittle" of it.
But perhaps I'm out of date with "traditional Christianity". Things change so fast these days.
Mosaic Law is the Ten Commandments, which does not include the death penalty for homosexuality
Not for the first time, I find the depths of your ignorance simply astounding!
And yet you continue to hold forth.
And I see you've now silently edited your nonsense about "Mosaic Law is the Ten Commandments" to "Mosaic Law for most Christians is the Ten Commandments".
Could you be more absurd if you tried?
Viz Top Tip for Debating with Certain Folk on PB: copy and paste the offending wording so the perpetrator can't silently change it and pretend it never said that.
There should be a rule on PB that if 10 people disagree with you on a topic without anyone supporting you, you have to accept that you're wrong or be banned for a week.
Bit of a nailbiter there. Given the current atmosphere that this is a moment for striking, I do wonder what could push the turnout any higher.
Tricky. A lot of teachers only join a union to get access to professional insurance and legal support if their head decides they don't like they way they teach. In a lot of fields, they simply wouldn't be union members.
(There's also something odd with a set of rules where not voting can be more effective opposition than voting against. Had the 9.6% NEU voters sat on their hands instead, the ballot would have failed to pass the turnout rule.)
Talking of which:
Also breaking: NAHTnews ballot has not reached turnout threshold
In England 64% of those who voted supported strikes, while 87% voted in favour of action short of a strike.
Look at the stats. Andz think if your statement makes sense.
If you think that the London teachers are (a) so frequent and (b) so much better paid as to bring the average to 102K then maybe you are counting to a different base. Base 7 and a half, perhaps?
Plus you're flat wrong about the 400K. Read your source again.
The head of an academy trust certainly earnt over £400k and a number of secondary school headteachers earnt over £200k and salaries that would be similar to those earnt by a partner in a corporate law firm
Head of an academy trust = company chief exec, NOT a headmaster. Read the article yet again. "The top earner by far, however, is Sir Dan Moynihan, chief executive of the Harris Federation, which runs 48 primary and secondary academies. He has seen his salary increase to between £455,000 and £460,000 [...]"
And remember - you claimed ""Given the average secondary school headteacher earns £102,000 a year".
They do at the top end of the scale
Oh, does the word "average" have a revolutionary new meaning in the Conservative Club at Epping? Or are you just not interested in the concept of documentable fact?
At the top end of the scale secondary headteachers have a range from £86k to £117k, so an effective average of £100k yes. Paid for by taxpayers
Doesn't say that anywhere in the article.
Wrong it makes clear in the article that is the payscale for headteachers at the top end
Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the Scottish Bill it was agreed in parliament there and for Westminster to use a section 35 order to block it is outrageous .
If it impacts on UK-wide equality legislation then there is nothing outrageous about it.
That's the essential point surely. Kemi Badenoch, several weeks ago, raised this as an issue and was, I thought, taking it up with ScotGov. Would be interesting to know how the discussions went.
There should be a rule on PB that if 10 people disagree with you on a topic without anyone supporting you, you have to accept that you're wrong or be banned for a week.
No as that 10 might well all be left liberals while you are a rightwinger, making it an echo chamber
The Urban Democratic Handicap: One thing that will make it harder for Joe Biden (or almost any other Democrat) to win the presidency is the way the Democrats have given up on much of the country.
There is a neat example of that in the current House leadership. https://www.house.gov/leadership The Democratic Leader is Hakeem Jeffries, representing the 8th New York district (Brooklyn). The Democratic Whip is Katherine Clark, representing the 5th Massachusetts district, which covers suburbs north and west of Boston. The Democratic Caucus Chairman is Pete Aguilar, representing California's 33rd district, consisting of cities in San Bernardino County. The Assistant Democratic Leader is James Clyburn, representing the 6th district of South Carolina. Most of the district is in black areas of cities such as Charleston, but it does include predominately black rural areas, as well.
In the US, it is common for parties to have "tickets" that are balanced geographically and, to some extent, ideologically. There is no one in that group from Texas or Florida, or any place in the Midwest. Only Clark represents a suburban district, though a majority of Americans now live in suburbs. All four can fairly be described as urban progressives.
With the exception of Clyburn, there is no one in the leadership who might have much direct contact with rural areas.
Penny Mordaunt has urged Church of England bishops to allow gay marriage ahead of their historic vote, marking the first intervention by a cabinet minister on the issue.
Ms Mordaunt, Leader of the House of Commons and MP for Portsmouth North, has written to the Bishop of Portsmouth, calling on him to to “recognize the pain and trauma” that failure to recognise same-sex marriage causes to “many LGBT+ people who are left feeling that they are treated as second class citizens within our society”.
Currently, according to canon law, no Church of England minister can bless or marry gay couples. Ms Mordaunt’s interjection marks the first time that a serving cabinet secretary has called for the issue to be reformed within the Church of England. She also warned that if bishops failed to approve same-sex marriage, the issue would only “fester and detract” from any positive contribution from the institution.
Her comments also come as next month, bishops will present their long-awaited findings to the General Synod – the Church’s legislative body – on whether the ban on gay marriage could be overturned.
Given a 2/3 majority for major change is needed in the House of Bishops, House of Clergy and House of Laity, I doubt there will be drastic change at Synod next month.
Evangelicals will block full endorsement of homosexual marriage and liberals will block retaining only a biblical Old Testament, Pauline view of marriage as between a man and woman.
So as with women priests or divorcee marriage I expect a fudge.
Church of England priests who want to bless same sex couples marriages will be able to, those who don't won't be forced to.
There may even be more flying Bishops in the Church of England as there are now for Parishes which don't agree with women priests
The problem, in my view, isn't a fusty church failing to reflect modern values. If Christian values (or values of any other religion) reflect the preferences of aj ineffable God, it seems unlikely to me that that God - who, if we are to believe the church, has been pretty anti-gay for tge last two millenia - has now changed his mind. What seems more likely is that the church doesn't really know, and never knew, what God thinks on any given subject, but knows what society thinks and is desperately trying to reflect that back. So the problem isn't that the church is wrong, it's that we listen to the church at all. We shouldn't be telling it what to think or do, we should be gently removing it from the decision-making process.
Western society you mean. In most of Africa and Asia there is no legal homosexual marriage, same with most of Eastern Europe and Italy and in some parts of North Africa and the Middle East and South Asia homosexuality is still illegal.
For those who are members of churches the position of that Church is significant. If the Church of England as the established church in England allows its clergy to conduct same sex marriage in England if they wish that will be a significant moment (Jesus for example never said anything against homosexual marriage)
But the church in those places is imply reflecting those societies' value back at it too. The problem is not that the church's - any church's views are 'wrong' - it is that the church doesn't have the insight it claims into what 'right' and 'wrong' are: the fact that its views are so mutable, and always seem to match the views of the society it operates within, suggest very strongly that it doesn't 'know' what God thinks, it is just winging it based on what it thinks society wants to hear. It is therefore adding no value to the decision making process. I'm not saying religion should be abolished - I do think it has a value - but that value isn't to the decision making process. Those of us who don't believe should neither tell those who do what they should think, nor pay any mind to what churches think the 'right' course of action is - because they have no more insight than anyone else.
Disestablish. Don't let religious organisations act as state registrars. Obviously let people get married in any religious ceremony they want. Just make them go to the registry office afterwards if they want a state-registered marriage. Of course churches should be allowed to say what they think is right and wrong. (And perhaps they do sometimes have more insight than those who don't think much about what's right and what's wrong. I'll judge that on each issue.)
No because if the Church of England allows homosexual marriages by its priests then the moment you disestablish the Roman Catholic Church, which takes a much harder anti gay marriage line, almost certainly becomes the largest Christian church in England within a decade again.
So you end up with an even harder line national Christian Church than you have now.
I also as a member of the Church of England would object to being forced to go to a registry office service I don't see as validating my marriage as well as the C of E service I do think validated it
But the Catholic Church doesn't become the national church, because: 1) If the CofE is any good, it will retain its numbers. And if it isn't, it doesn't deserve to stay as the 'national church'; but more importantly 2) in the scenario DJ41 describes, we don't have a national church at all. The secular majority simply stop listening to what the church say. The churches are free to say whatever they want, but the rest of us don't have to pay them any heed.
Do you object to registering the birth of your child in a registry office? If not, why would you object to registering your marriage? It only needs to be a 5 minute job telling the state about it. You can still celebrate it, properly, in as much depth as you consider appropriate, in a church, in front of your friends, family and God. A quick trip to Epping Registry office with your new wife when you return from honeymoon to fill in a form doesn't strike me as onerous.
Yes it does. In virtually every other nation where Christians are the majority or plurality religious group, the Roman Catholic Church is the largest religious denomination. The only other exceptions are nations like Denmark where the Lutheran Church of Denmark is the established church or South Africa or Ghana where Pentecostal evangelical churches are the largest Christian group.
If the Church of England was disestablished most of the Anglo Catholics would become Roman Catholic and most of the evangelicals would become Pentecostal or Baptist as is the case in the USA for example where the Episcopalian Church is a smaller largely liberal church with hardline evangelicals and Catholics pushing against abortion and gay marriage.
The latter of course means the Christian churches become increasingly pushing a political agenda and free of being established don't give a toss what the secular majority think. Indeed with immigrants tending to be more socially conservative Christians and Muslims too.
Signing a form to register your child is not the same as having to have a second baptism service at a registry office
Russia?
Well the Eastern Orthodox Church is basically the Roman Catholic Church just with a Patriarch not Pope and even more ornate ceremony
Okaaaayyyyyy....
I clearly missed that time the Catholics allowed lay clergy below the rank of bishop to marry.
Michael Cerularius would be spinning in his grave at HYUFD's comments.
I am actually with HYUFD here. The Orthodox and Catholic feud is the narcissism of small differences. They are both the remaining State Church of the Roman Empire. A bit like Italian and Spanish both being legacy vulgar Latin.
Where I don't agree is the conflating of Pauline marriage and Old Testament marriage. Pauline marriage is the Roman view: the strict lifelong monogamy as demanded by Jesus, but with added homophobia. Old Testament marriage allowed hundreds of wives, plus concubines, plus sex slaves. That's worst than Muslim marriage, which is up to four wives plus sex slaves. Ironically the adaption from polygamy to monogamy between the OT and the NT is exactly the mindset of the religious establishment adapting the views of God to contemporary society that the Anglicans are now doing today.
Depends which part, the Ten Commandments forbade adultery
Remember, it's not premarital sex if you never get married.
In the Bible Corinthians opposes sex outside marriage and immorality as does the Koran at 24:2 (including lashings for unmarried fornicators)
Well, if you're (still) talking about gay marriage, don't forget Leviticus 20:13: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death"
Never mind this namby-pamby stuff about no gay marriages in church. Bible-believing Christians should be campaigning for the death penalty for sodomy.
Leviticus is Old Testament rather than New which is the basis of the Christian Bible and certainly nothing Jesus said.
Though of course homosexuality is punishable by death in Afghanistan and some parts of the Middle East even today unfortunately
It's certainly news to me that the Mosaic Law is not part of the Christian Bible, or indeed that Jesus didn't endorse every "jot and tittle" of it.
But perhaps I'm out of date with "traditional Christianity". Things change so fast these days.
Mosaic Law is the Ten Commandments, which does not include the death penalty for homosexuality
Not for the first time, I find the depths of your ignorance simply astounding!
And yet you continue to hold forth.
Nothing ignorant about it.
Google would be your friend, if you only had the wit to use it occasionally.
Penny Mordaunt has urged Church of England bishops to allow gay marriage ahead of their historic vote, marking the first intervention by a cabinet minister on the issue.
Ms Mordaunt, Leader of the House of Commons and MP for Portsmouth North, has written to the Bishop of Portsmouth, calling on him to to “recognize the pain and trauma” that failure to recognise same-sex marriage causes to “many LGBT+ people who are left feeling that they are treated as second class citizens within our society”.
Currently, according to canon law, no Church of England minister can bless or marry gay couples. Ms Mordaunt’s interjection marks the first time that a serving cabinet secretary has called for the issue to be reformed within the Church of England. She also warned that if bishops failed to approve same-sex marriage, the issue would only “fester and detract” from any positive contribution from the institution.
Her comments also come as next month, bishops will present their long-awaited findings to the General Synod – the Church’s legislative body – on whether the ban on gay marriage could be overturned.
Given a 2/3 majority for major change is needed in the House of Bishops, House of Clergy and House of Laity, I doubt there will be drastic change at Synod next month.
Evangelicals will block full endorsement of homosexual marriage and liberals will block retaining only a biblical Old Testament, Pauline view of marriage as between a man and woman.
So as with women priests or divorcee marriage I expect a fudge.
Church of England priests who want to bless same sex couples marriages will be able to, those who don't won't be forced to.
There may even be more flying Bishops in the Church of England as there are now for Parishes which don't agree with women priests
The problem, in my view, isn't a fusty church failing to reflect modern values. If Christian values (or values of any other religion) reflect the preferences of aj ineffable God, it seems unlikely to me that that God - who, if we are to believe the church, has been pretty anti-gay for tge last two millenia - has now changed his mind. What seems more likely is that the church doesn't really know, and never knew, what God thinks on any given subject, but knows what society thinks and is desperately trying to reflect that back. So the problem isn't that the church is wrong, it's that we listen to the church at all. We shouldn't be telling it what to think or do, we should be gently removing it from the decision-making process.
Western society you mean. In most of Africa and Asia there is no legal homosexual marriage, same with most of Eastern Europe and Italy and in some parts of North Africa and the Middle East and South Asia homosexuality is still illegal.
For those who are members of churches the position of that Church is significant. If the Church of England as the established church in England allows its clergy to conduct same sex marriage in England if they wish that will be a significant moment (Jesus for example never said anything against homosexual marriage)
But the church in those places is imply reflecting those societies' value back at it too. The problem is not that the church's - any church's views are 'wrong' - it is that the church doesn't have the insight it claims into what 'right' and 'wrong' are: the fact that its views are so mutable, and always seem to match the views of the society it operates within, suggest very strongly that it doesn't 'know' what God thinks, it is just winging it based on what it thinks society wants to hear. It is therefore adding no value to the decision making process. I'm not saying religion should be abolished - I do think it has a value - but that value isn't to the decision making process. Those of us who don't believe should neither tell those who do what they should think, nor pay any mind to what churches think the 'right' course of action is - because they have no more insight than anyone else.
Disestablish. Don't let religious organisations act as state registrars. Obviously let people get married in any religious ceremony they want. Just make them go to the registry office afterwards if they want a state-registered marriage. Of course churches should be allowed to say what they think is right and wrong. (And perhaps they do sometimes have more insight than those who don't think much about what's right and what's wrong. I'll judge that on each issue.)
No because if the Church of England allows homosexual marriages by its priests then the moment you disestablish the Roman Catholic Church, which takes a much harder anti gay marriage line, almost certainly becomes the largest Christian church in England within a decade again.
So you end up with an even harder line national Christian Church than you have now.
I also as a member of the Church of England would object to being forced to go to a registry office service I don't see as validating my marriage as well as the C of E service I do think validated it
But the Catholic Church doesn't become the national church, because: 1) If the CofE is any good, it will retain its numbers. And if it isn't, it doesn't deserve to stay as the 'national church'; but more importantly 2) in the scenario DJ41 describes, we don't have a national church at all. The secular majority simply stop listening to what the church say. The churches are free to say whatever they want, but the rest of us don't have to pay them any heed.
Do you object to registering the birth of your child in a registry office? If not, why would you object to registering your marriage? It only needs to be a 5 minute job telling the state about it. You can still celebrate it, properly, in as much depth as you consider appropriate, in a church, in front of your friends, family and God. A quick trip to Epping Registry office with your new wife when you return from honeymoon to fill in a form doesn't strike me as onerous.
Yes it does. In virtually every other nation where Christians are the majority or plurality religious group, the Roman Catholic Church is the largest religious denomination. The only other exceptions are nations like Denmark where the Lutheran Church of Denmark is the established church or South Africa or Ghana where Pentecostal evangelical churches are the largest Christian group.
If the Church of England was disestablished most of the Anglo Catholics would become Roman Catholic and most of the evangelicals would become Pentecostal or Baptist as is the case in the USA for example where the Episcopalian Church is a smaller largely liberal church with hardline evangelicals and Catholics pushing against abortion and gay marriage.
The latter of course means the Christian churches become increasingly pushing a political agenda and free of being established don't give a toss what the secular majority think. Indeed with immigrants tending to be more socially conservative Christians and Muslims too.
Signing a form to register your child is not the same as having to have a second baptism service at a registry office
Russia?
Well the Eastern Orthodox Church is basically the Roman Catholic Church just with a Patriarch not Pope and even more ornate ceremony
Okaaaayyyyyy....
I clearly missed that time the Catholics allowed lay clergy below the rank of bishop to marry.
Michael Cerularius would be spinning in his grave at HYUFD's comments.
I am actually with HYUFD here. The Orthodox and Catholic feud is the narcissism of small differences. They are both the remaining State Church of the Roman Empire. A bit like Italian and Spanish both being legacy vulgar Latin.
Where I don't agree is the conflating of Pauline marriage and Old Testament marriage. Pauline marriage is the Roman view: the strict lifelong monogamy as demanded by Jesus, but with added homophobia. Old Testament marriage allowed hundreds of wives, plus concubines, plus sex slaves. That's worst than Muslim marriage, which is up to four wives plus sex slaves. Ironically the adaption from polygamy to monogamy between the OT and the NT is exactly the mindset of the religious establishment adapting the views of God to contemporary society that the Anglicans are now doing today.
Depends which part, the Ten Commandments forbade adultery
Remember, it's not premarital sex if you never get married.
In the Bible Corinthians opposes sex outside marriage and immorality as does the Koran at 24:2 (including lashings for unmarried fornicators)
Well, if you're (still) talking about gay marriage, don't forget Leviticus 20:13: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death"
Never mind this namby-pamby stuff about no gay marriages in church. Bible-believing Christians should be campaigning for the death penalty for sodomy.
Leviticus is Old Testament rather than New which is the basis of the Christian Bible and certainly nothing Jesus said.
Though of course homosexuality is punishable by death in Afghanistan and some parts of the Middle East even today unfortunately
So you are saying that the Word of God is a load of old bollocks. We agree again!
Bit of a nailbiter there. Given the current atmosphere that this is a moment for striking, I do wonder what could push the turnout any higher.
Tricky. A lot of teachers only join a union to get access to professional insurance and legal support if their head decides they don't like they way they teach. In a lot of fields, they simply wouldn't be union members.
(There's also something odd with a set of rules where not voting can be more effective opposition than voting against. Had the 9.6% NEU voters sat on their hands instead, the ballot would have failed to pass the turnout rule.)
Talking of which:
Also breaking: NAHTnews ballot has not reached turnout threshold
In England 64% of those who voted supported strikes, while 87% voted in favour of action short of a strike.
Look at the stats. Andz think if your statement makes sense.
If you think that the London teachers are (a) so frequent and (b) so much better paid as to bring the average to 102K then maybe you are counting to a different base. Base 7 and a half, perhaps?
Plus you're flat wrong about the 400K. Read your source again.
The head of an academy trust certainly earnt over £400k and a number of secondary school headteachers earnt over £200k and salaries that would be similar to those earnt by a partner in a corporate law firm
Head of an academy trust = company chief exec, NOT a headmaster. Read the article yet again. "The top earner by far, however, is Sir Dan Moynihan, chief executive of the Harris Federation, which runs 48 primary and secondary academies. He has seen his salary increase to between £455,000 and £460,000 [...]"
And remember - you claimed ""Given the average secondary school headteacher earns £102,000 a year".
They do at the top end of the scale
Oh, does the word "average" have a revolutionary new meaning in the Conservative Club at Epping? Or are you just not interested in the concept of documentable fact?
At the top end of the scale secondary headteachers have a range from £86k to £117k, so an effective average of £100k yes. Paid for by taxpayers
Your said the average secondary school head earns £102k. Not the average of the heads in the top pay scale band which is clearly a nonsense metric. Why can you never admit it when you make a mistake. You will get a lot more respect by doing so. Nothing to be ashamed of.
This is the right course of action in principle. The Scottish gender reform bill has some detrimental impacts on the protections the Equality Act provides for Scottish women & girls. V likely will end up in the courts.
Penny Mordaunt has urged Church of England bishops to allow gay marriage ahead of their historic vote, marking the first intervention by a cabinet minister on the issue.
Ms Mordaunt, Leader of the House of Commons and MP for Portsmouth North, has written to the Bishop of Portsmouth, calling on him to to “recognize the pain and trauma” that failure to recognise same-sex marriage causes to “many LGBT+ people who are left feeling that they are treated as second class citizens within our society”.
Currently, according to canon law, no Church of England minister can bless or marry gay couples. Ms Mordaunt’s interjection marks the first time that a serving cabinet secretary has called for the issue to be reformed within the Church of England. She also warned that if bishops failed to approve same-sex marriage, the issue would only “fester and detract” from any positive contribution from the institution.
Her comments also come as next month, bishops will present their long-awaited findings to the General Synod – the Church’s legislative body – on whether the ban on gay marriage could be overturned.
Given a 2/3 majority for major change is needed in the House of Bishops, House of Clergy and House of Laity, I doubt there will be drastic change at Synod next month.
Evangelicals will block full endorsement of homosexual marriage and liberals will block retaining only a biblical Old Testament, Pauline view of marriage as between a man and woman.
So as with women priests or divorcee marriage I expect a fudge.
Church of England priests who want to bless same sex couples marriages will be able to, those who don't won't be forced to.
There may even be more flying Bishops in the Church of England as there are now for Parishes which don't agree with women priests
The problem, in my view, isn't a fusty church failing to reflect modern values. If Christian values (or values of any other religion) reflect the preferences of aj ineffable God, it seems unlikely to me that that God - who, if we are to believe the church, has been pretty anti-gay for tge last two millenia - has now changed his mind. What seems more likely is that the church doesn't really know, and never knew, what God thinks on any given subject, but knows what society thinks and is desperately trying to reflect that back. So the problem isn't that the church is wrong, it's that we listen to the church at all. We shouldn't be telling it what to think or do, we should be gently removing it from the decision-making process.
Western society you mean. In most of Africa and Asia there is no legal homosexual marriage, same with most of Eastern Europe and Italy and in some parts of North Africa and the Middle East and South Asia homosexuality is still illegal.
For those who are members of churches the position of that Church is significant. If the Church of England as the established church in England allows its clergy to conduct same sex marriage in England if they wish that will be a significant moment (Jesus for example never said anything against homosexual marriage)
But the church in those places is imply reflecting those societies' value back at it too. The problem is not that the church's - any church's views are 'wrong' - it is that the church doesn't have the insight it claims into what 'right' and 'wrong' are: the fact that its views are so mutable, and always seem to match the views of the society it operates within, suggest very strongly that it doesn't 'know' what God thinks, it is just winging it based on what it thinks society wants to hear. It is therefore adding no value to the decision making process. I'm not saying religion should be abolished - I do think it has a value - but that value isn't to the decision making process. Those of us who don't believe should neither tell those who do what they should think, nor pay any mind to what churches think the 'right' course of action is - because they have no more insight than anyone else.
Disestablish. Don't let religious organisations act as state registrars. Obviously let people get married in any religious ceremony they want. Just make them go to the registry office afterwards if they want a state-registered marriage. Of course churches should be allowed to say what they think is right and wrong. (And perhaps they do sometimes have more insight than those who don't think much about what's right and what's wrong. I'll judge that on each issue.)
No because if the Church of England allows homosexual marriages by its priests then the moment you disestablish the Roman Catholic Church, which takes a much harder anti gay marriage line, almost certainly becomes the largest Christian church in England within a decade again.
So you end up with an even harder line national Christian Church than you have now.
I also as a member of the Church of England would object to being forced to go to a registry office service I don't see as validating my marriage as well as the C of E service I do think validated it
But the Catholic Church doesn't become the national church, because: 1) If the CofE is any good, it will retain its numbers. And if it isn't, it doesn't deserve to stay as the 'national church'; but more importantly 2) in the scenario DJ41 describes, we don't have a national church at all. The secular majority simply stop listening to what the church say. The churches are free to say whatever they want, but the rest of us don't have to pay them any heed.
Do you object to registering the birth of your child in a registry office? If not, why would you object to registering your marriage? It only needs to be a 5 minute job telling the state about it. You can still celebrate it, properly, in as much depth as you consider appropriate, in a church, in front of your friends, family and God. A quick trip to Epping Registry office with your new wife when you return from honeymoon to fill in a form doesn't strike me as onerous.
Yes it does. In virtually every other nation where Christians are the majority or plurality religious group, the Roman Catholic Church is the largest religious denomination. The only other exceptions are nations like Denmark where the Lutheran Church of Denmark is the established church or South Africa or Ghana where Pentecostal evangelical churches are the largest Christian group.
If the Church of England was disestablished most of the Anglo Catholics would become Roman Catholic and most of the evangelicals would become Pentecostal or Baptist as is the case in the USA for example where the Episcopalian Church is a smaller largely liberal church with hardline evangelicals and Catholics pushing against abortion and gay marriage.
The latter of course means the Christian churches become increasingly pushing a political agenda and free of being established don't give a toss what the secular majority think. Indeed with immigrants tending to be more socially conservative Christians and Muslims too.
Signing a form to register your child is not the same as having to have a second baptism service at a registry office
Russia?
Well the Eastern Orthodox Church is basically the Roman Catholic Church just with a Patriarch not Pope and even more ornate ceremony
Okaaaayyyyyy....
I clearly missed that time the Catholics allowed lay clergy below the rank of bishop to marry.
Michael Cerularius would be spinning in his grave at HYUFD's comments.
I am actually with HYUFD here. The Orthodox and Catholic feud is the narcissism of small differences. They are both the remaining State Church of the Roman Empire. A bit like Italian and Spanish both being legacy vulgar Latin.
Where I don't agree is the conflating of Pauline marriage and Old Testament marriage. Pauline marriage is the Roman view: the strict lifelong monogamy as demanded by Jesus, but with added homophobia. Old Testament marriage allowed hundreds of wives, plus concubines, plus sex slaves. That's worst than Muslim marriage, which is up to four wives plus sex slaves. Ironically the adaption from polygamy to monogamy between the OT and the NT is exactly the mindset of the religious establishment adapting the views of God to contemporary society that the Anglicans are now doing today.
Depends which part, the Ten Commandments forbade adultery
Remember, it's not premarital sex if you never get married.
In the Bible Corinthians opposes sex outside marriage and immorality as does the Koran at 24:2 (including lashings for unmarried fornicators)
Does the wife have to be married to you to have sex with her?
If she’s married to somebody else and I have sex with her does it make it ok ?
Yes otherwise it is adultery, certainly on her part and yours too if you are also married
On the fornication, if marriage has retrospective application I am okay.
There should be a rule on PB that if 10 people disagree with you on a topic without anyone supporting you, you have to accept that you're wrong or be banned for a week.
No as that 10 might well all be left liberals while you are a rightwinger, making it an echo chamber
Not one rightwinger would provide agreement? That's rather pessimistic of you. I don't think the proposal was a serious one, but I think it is fair to say if not 1 in 10 agree with another person it must be a matter beyond left and right politics (Yes, some things are beyond support for petty party ideologies).
There should be a rule on PB that if 10 people disagree with you on a topic without anyone supporting you, you have to accept that you're wrong or be banned for a week.
There should be a rule on PB that if 10 people disagree with you on a topic without anyone supporting you, you have to accept that you're wrong or be banned for a week.
No as that 10 might well all be left liberals while you are a rightwinger, making it an echo chamber
Not one rightwinger would provide agreement? That's rather pessimistic of you. I don't think the proposal was a serious one, but I think it is fair to say if not 1 in 10 agree with another person it must be a matter beyond left and right politics (Yes, some things are beyond support for petty party ideologies).
I doubt it, even now 25 to 30% are voting Tory, 30-35% Tory and RefUK.
I highly doubt a third of PBers now would vote Tory or RefUK, it clearly leans on average left liberal now
There should be a rule on PB that if 10 people disagree with you on a topic without anyone supporting you, you have to accept that you're wrong or be banned for a week.
No as that 10 might well all be left liberals while you are a rightwinger, making it an echo chamber
Some things are opinions depending upon your political views and then there are facts. You seem to struggle to tell the difference.
This is the right course of action in principle. The Scottish gender reform bill has some detrimental impacts on the protections the Equality Act provides for Scottish women & girls. V likely will end up in the courts.
Scottish Green MSP Maggie Chapman on @LBC just now said that for the UK Government "even to threaten to act is entirely inappropriate" and they would be "playing roughshod with devolution". #GRRBill
She said she couldn't possibly know what sex she was because she had never had her chromosomes tested..
I think everyone's overlooking the obvious. This isn't about transgender rights. That's not something Sturgeon cares about, as far as can be judged. This is about shoring up her political base on one hand, while daring the UK Parliament to overrule her for exceeding her powers so she can claim to be being victimised.
Meanwhile, precisely because she's acting as though she's President of Scotland, Westminster is looking for an excuse to slap her down and remind her she isn't.
The irony that it's over something as tangential as this is probably more apparent than real. If anyone took this subject especially seriously they would have thrashed it out in advance to ensure this didn't happen.
It's essentially the same reform as in place in several other countries and that Mrs May's government planned to do in 2018. Agree or not, it's not some wild and crazy whim of Nicola Sturgeon’s.
Quite. The UN observer was telling them to get on with the basic reform.
One of us pointed out that the next problem was that sorting out all the consequences required modificastion to equality rights law which remained within Westminster remit, so basically the Scottish Pmt were damned whatever they did if HMG and the Tories wanted to obstruct.
Logically speaking, if the EA needs revision or clarification for a society where people can obtain a GRC differing from their natal sex, doesn't it need that regardless of this reform? Because people can obtain a GRC now, can't they? Just that it's a long and harrowing process.
There should be a rule on PB that if 10 people disagree with you on a topic without anyone supporting you, you have to accept that you're wrong or be banned for a week.
No as that 10 might well all be left liberals while you are a rightwinger, making it an echo chamber
Some things are opinions depending upon your political views and then there are facts. You seem to struggle to tell the difference.
But to be fair, ten people disagreeing with you is merely ten people expressing their opinion.
Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the Scottish Bill it was agreed in parliament there and for Westminster to use a section 35 order to block it is outrageous .
I'm not sure I do quite agree. I think the use of it in this instance may be outrageous, but it would seem that a power was deliberately left in to allow for at least some situation where it was theoretically deemed approrpriate.
That would clearly need to be a very high bar, one that has never before been reached and despite the cases made by opponents I don't think that bar has been reached, and therefore the decision of the Scottish Parliament should prevail (just as they should be granted a referendum, because the elected Parliament for Scotland has voted for one), but I think it remains a case of judging whether the use of such a provision is necessary (not simply reasonable) in some way, since so long as there is a UK state, a carve out for the UK government for some extreme situation seems like a safeguard that should be there. If there is no reason to ever say no even in theory to the Scottish parliament it really should just be independent.
Which, of course, even some on the fence will probably feel about this particular decision. Which I'd understand, I don't think the government can defend this decision as a uniquely justifying measure for an action they have never undertaken before. I just feel that ruling out the possibility such a decision could be appropriate, by saying it would outrageous in all circumstances, in effect, goes one smidge too far.
The Scottish decision was a provocation:
* see how insane we can get - we don't care - we're f*cking mental
* you English b*stards stop us doing stuff - it shows what you're like, and it shows that our own view of ourselves is utterly correct - isn't that right, lads?
You're looking at it like a lawyer.
If Rishi Sunak had found something more interesting to spend his time looking at and responding to than this loony sh*t from the big Scottish town hall (and who could blame him?), the McVolkisch YeSNP nutters would just have pushed the envelope further. Eventually he'd have had to respond.
What Sunak may find he should do is say "I've had e-f*cking-nough of this. You talk loony sh*t and you don't represent the Scottish people. Let's test that, shall we? Labour and the LibDems haven't had the guts to call for a Scottish general election. Well I'll tell you what. I'm calling a c*nting independence referendum. It's going to be on [date]. If you want 16 year old McLaddies who think they're really McLassies to be able to hoik their kilts in the toilet cubicles next to yours, ladies, or next to your sisters' and wives' and daughters' cubicles, gentlemen, vote for the loony option on [date]. Up to you."
Then the YeSNP will say, "[Date]? What do you mean, [date], you foreign git? We want it on [McDate]."
It could be argued that the above would be playing the YeSNP's game... But would that be accurate? The wind does seem to be blowing towards an indyref rerun, so the perception of who is doing what to whom to trigger it is important.
Of all the things to "grievance-monger" over, Trans rights doesn't seem that sensible given most Scots are against the legislation (according to polls).
Don't think this is 4d chess from Sturgeon. Think she really believes in it.
I’m not entirely sure that “if we were independent, we’d be able to pass all the badly-drafted laws we wanted” is the BEST argument for Scottish independence.
There should be a rule on PB that if 10 people disagree with you on a topic without anyone supporting you, you have to accept that you're wrong or be banned for a week.
No as that 10 might well all be left liberals while you are a rightwinger, making it an echo chamber
Some things are opinions depending upon your political views and then there are facts. You seem to struggle to tell the difference.
But to be fair, ten people disagreeing with you is merely ten people expressing their opinion.
I suppose the idea that there are no facts, only opinions, is an essential tenet of the wonderful world of social media.
As in "I may know no Swahili, but I have the right to translate it without contradiction from someone who does."
I did some searching yesterday for the proportions of urban, suburban, and rural people in the American population. I didn't find any official sources that satisfied me completely, since I was looking for political perceptions. (Example of the complications: Staten Island is one of the five boroughs (counties) of New York City, but in many ways, it is more like a suburb. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the same is true of the eastern part of another borough, Queens.)
Probably, rounding off, urban areas have about 30 percent of the population, suburban areas 50 percent, and rural areas about 20 percent. Suburban areas would have a higher proportion of the total vote in most elections, since voters in suburbs are more likely to vote.
Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the Scottish Bill it was agreed in parliament there and for Westminster to use a section 35 order to block it is outrageous .
If it impacts on UK-wide equality legislation then there is nothing outrageous about it.
I wonder if it does though. I find the logic a little shaky. Let's see how it plays out.
I’m not entirely sure that “if we were independent, we’d be able to pass all the badly-drafted laws we wanted” is the BEST argument for Scottish independence.
Hmm, not convinced by that. It's only gut feeling, but I suspect there are fewer people on the fence who are happy about the UK government vetoing what they see as a badly drafted law, as there are people on the fence who may not like the legislation but think it is a devolved matter that does not, despite the view of Jack, impact on UK wide matters, and as such they would dislike but defend the Scottish Parliament for passing it.
Re: Scotland, sounds like yet again, good time being had by (just about) all
> First Minister & SNP get to wave the Saltire (aka Four Blue Triangles?)
> Prime Minister, his Sec for North Britain & CUP get to wave the Union Jack (Jock north of the Border?)
> Trans-activists AND opponents get to re-debate from Wight to Wick (the Woke and the Wack?)
> PBers ditto (ditto?)
Only a temporary good time for the gov though. What's the next move?
When was the last time that the Conservatives thought more than one move ahead?
Hey, they made a move at least, not just thought about taking a move until a bad headline and angry old biddies in the Shires forced them to back down.
Re: Scotland, sounds like yet again, good time being had by (just about) all
> First Minister & SNP get to wave the Saltire (aka Four Blue Triangles?)
> Prime Minister, his Sec for North Britain & CUP get to wave the Union Jack (Jock north of the Border?)
> Trans-activists AND opponents get to re-debate from Wight to Wick (the Woke and the Wack?)
> PBers ditto (ditto?)
Only a temporary good time for the gov though. What's the next move?
From a Scots Tory POV what's not to like?
All Scots Tory voters past, present and future will be opposed to measures which reduce the age of changing gender to 16, and will be less than keen on the potential compromising of women-only spaces. And, moreover, as a tidy bonus, they have J K Rowling onside!
Plus there is the added bonus that many on the SNP side are deeply uncomfortable with the measure (although they will no doubt unite against Westminster intervention.) And, of course, poor old Labour are in disarrayon the issue.
I’m not entirely sure that “if we were independent, we’d be able to pass all the badly-drafted laws we wanted” is the BEST argument for Scottish independence.
There is a serious point about Holyrood needing a second chamber. Far too much stuff ending up in court, which is never a good sign for a democracy (see the US).
Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the Scottish Bill it was agreed in parliament there and for Westminster to use a section 35 order to block it is outrageous .
If it impacts on UK-wide equality legislation then there is nothing outrageous about it.
I wonder if it does though. I find the logic a little shaky. Let's see how it plays out.
It is at the least a fairly niche interest to get that far into the detail to assess the claim that it affects UK wide legislation, and whether that justifies this, and 90% of people won't be doing that so will be judging it on much broader terms - eg the law is bad I don't like it/Scotlandddddddd!
I did some searching yesterday for the proportions of urban, suburban, and rural people in the American population. I didn't find any official sources that satisfied me completely, since I was looking for political perceptions. (Example of the complications: Staten Island is one of the five boroughs (counties) of New York City, but in many ways, it is more like a suburb. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the same is true of the eastern part of another borough, Queens.)
Probably, rounding off, urban areas have about 30 percent of the population, suburban areas 50 percent, and rural areas about 20 percent. Suburban areas would have a higher proportion of the total vote in most elections, since voters in suburbs are more likely to vote.
Suburban areas in the US though also includes commuter towns and exurbs not just strict suburbs of cities
There should be a rule on PB that if 10 people disagree with you on a topic without anyone supporting you, you have to accept that you're wrong or be banned for a week.
No as that 10 might well all be left liberals while you are a rightwinger, making it an echo chamber
Some things are opinions depending upon your political views and then there are facts. You seem to struggle to tell the difference.
But to be fair, ten people disagreeing with you is merely ten people expressing their opinion.
I suppose the idea that there are no facts, only opinions, is an essential tenet of the wonderful world of social media.
As in "I may know no Swahili, but I have the right to translate it without contradiction from someone who does."
Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the Scottish Bill it was agreed in parliament there and for Westminster to use a section 35 order to block it is outrageous .
If it impacts on UK-wide equality legislation then there is nothing outrageous about it.
I wonder if it does though. I find the logic a little shaky. Let's see how it plays out.
It is at the least a fairly niche interest to get that far into the detail to assess the claim that it affects UK wide legislation, and whether that justifies this, and 90% of people won't be doing that so will be judging it on much broader terms - eg the law is bad I don't like it/Scotlandddddddd!
Of all the things to "grievance-monger" over, Trans rights doesn't seem that sensible given most Scots are against the legislation (according to polls).
Don't think this is 4d chess from Sturgeon. Think she really believes in it.
It's a step on from various things she did to make sure Scotland would have different lockdown and masks policies from England. If she wins on this, she will take further steps.
There should be a rule on PB that if 10 people disagree with you on a topic without anyone supporting you, you have to accept that you're wrong or be banned for a week.
That's an absurd rule.
It would just incentivise whatever was popular/the consensus at the time.
Scottish Green MSP Maggie Chapman on @LBC just now said that for the UK Government "even to threaten to act is entirely inappropriate" and they would be "playing roughshod with devolution". #GRRBill
She said she couldn't possibly know what sex she was because she had never had her chromosomes tested..
I think everyone's overlooking the obvious. This isn't about transgender rights. That's not something Sturgeon cares about, as far as can be judged. This is about shoring up her political base on one hand, while daring the UK Parliament to overrule her for exceeding her powers so she can claim to be being victimised.
Meanwhile, precisely because she's acting as though she's President of Scotland, Westminster is looking for an excuse to slap her down and remind her she isn't.
The irony that it's over something as tangential as this is probably more apparent than real. If anyone took this subject especially seriously they would have thrashed it out in advance to ensure this didn't happen.
The current review process of the GRA began in 2017. How much more thrashing out would you consider sufficient?
Of all the things to "grievance-monger" over, Trans rights doesn't seem that sensible given most Scots are against the legislation (according to polls).
Don't think this is 4d chess from Sturgeon. Think she really believes in it.
Scottish Green MSP Maggie Chapman on @LBC just now said that for the UK Government "even to threaten to act is entirely inappropriate" and they would be "playing roughshod with devolution". #GRRBill
She said she couldn't possibly know what sex she was because she had never had her chromosomes tested..
I think everyone's overlooking the obvious. This isn't about transgender rights. That's not something Sturgeon cares about, as far as can be judged. This is about shoring up her political base on one hand, while daring the UK Parliament to overrule her for exceeding her powers so she can claim to be being victimised.
Meanwhile, precisely because she's acting as though she's President of Scotland, Westminster is looking for an excuse to slap her down and remind her she isn't.
The irony that it's over something as tangential as this is probably more apparent than real. If anyone took this subject especially seriously they would have thrashed it out in advance to ensure this didn't happen.
The current review process of the GRA began in 2017. How much more thrashing out would you consider sufficient?
Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the Scottish Bill it was agreed in parliament there and for Westminster to use a section 35 order to block it is outrageous .
If it impacts on UK-wide equality legislation then there is nothing outrageous about it.
I wonder if it does though. I find the logic a little shaky. Let's see how it plays out.
THREAD: Raising the interaction of the GRR Bill with the Equality Act 2010.
We, along with others, have raised this as a key issue with government and MSPs, and in the media, over several years. This thread brings together examples of that.
The Scottish Government didn’t even try to address issues:
THREAD: In January last year, we submitted an FoI to the Scotland Office, to find out what approaches the Scottish Govt had made to it over the GRR Bill, since the second Scottish consultation closed, on 17 March 2020. It held no records of any.
There should be a rule on PB that if 10 people disagree with you on a topic without anyone supporting you, you have to accept that you're wrong or be banned for a week.
No as that 10 might well all be left liberals while you are a rightwinger, making it an echo chamber
Some things are opinions depending upon your political views and then there are facts. You seem to struggle to tell the difference.
But to be fair, ten people disagreeing with you is merely ten people expressing their opinion.
One well-expressed dissenting opinion is worth ten badly expressed similar ones.
Scottish Green MSP Maggie Chapman on @LBC just now said that for the UK Government "even to threaten to act is entirely inappropriate" and they would be "playing roughshod with devolution". #GRRBill
She said she couldn't possibly know what sex she was because she had never had her chromosomes tested..
I think everyone's overlooking the obvious. This isn't about transgender rights. That's not something Sturgeon cares about, as far as can be judged. This is about shoring up her political base on one hand, while daring the UK Parliament to overrule her for exceeding her powers so she can claim to be being victimised.
Meanwhile, precisely because she's acting as though she's President of Scotland, Westminster is looking for an excuse to slap her down and remind her she isn't.
The irony that it's over something as tangential as this is probably more apparent than real. If anyone took this subject especially seriously they would have thrashed it out in advance to ensure this didn't happen.
The current review process of the GRA began in 2017. How much more thrashing out would you consider sufficient?
If it's not within their competence, or even may not be within their competence, you would have thought even a government that contains the towering intellect of John Swinney would have thought to get it checked out in that six year period. And come to an understanding on that basis.
It's not as though there's been a moderate government in Westminster that might have given them more latitude in that time. So they presumably just didn't bother.
There should be a rule on PB that if 10 people disagree with you on a topic without anyone supporting you, you have to accept that you're wrong or be banned for a week.
That's an absurd rule.
It would just incentivise whatever was popular/the consensus at the time.
Or sock puppet accounts, which absolutely don't ever feature here.
Fun for Starmer on the gender reform stuff. Does he want to support a Tory government blocking legislation his branch office colleagues voted for, even if he's not that happy about the legislation himself?
Of course, this suits the Tories as much as it suits Nicola Sturgeon. Starmer will have to give his opinion on the matter.
I will be intrigued to see what he says. It's quite a challenge he's been set here. How can he say 'they are all total fuckwits with no manners cynically misusing rights legislation for their own retarded agendas' without sounding rude?
He'll say he has concerns about the Scottish legislation but that this was not the way to resolve the impasse, without saying how it could have been resolved.
Dad who isn't angry, but disappointed with both of them.
While of course ignoring the annoying wee kid dancing about on the edge of the scrap (SLab) who has inconveniently has taken one side.
Penny Mordaunt has urged Church of England bishops to allow gay marriage ahead of their historic vote, marking the first intervention by a cabinet minister on the issue.
Ms Mordaunt, Leader of the House of Commons and MP for Portsmouth North, has written to the Bishop of Portsmouth, calling on him to to “recognize the pain and trauma” that failure to recognise same-sex marriage causes to “many LGBT+ people who are left feeling that they are treated as second class citizens within our society”.
Currently, according to canon law, no Church of England minister can bless or marry gay couples. Ms Mordaunt’s interjection marks the first time that a serving cabinet secretary has called for the issue to be reformed within the Church of England. She also warned that if bishops failed to approve same-sex marriage, the issue would only “fester and detract” from any positive contribution from the institution.
Her comments also come as next month, bishops will present their long-awaited findings to the General Synod – the Church’s legislative body – on whether the ban on gay marriage could be overturned.
Given a 2/3 majority for major change is needed in the House of Bishops, House of Clergy and House of Laity, I doubt there will be drastic change at Synod next month.
Evangelicals will block full endorsement of homosexual marriage and liberals will block retaining only a biblical Old Testament, Pauline view of marriage as between a man and woman.
So as with women priests or divorcee marriage I expect a fudge.
Church of England priests who want to bless same sex couples marriages will be able to, those who don't won't be forced to.
There may even be more flying Bishops in the Church of England as there are now for Parishes which don't agree with women priests
The problem, in my view, isn't a fusty church failing to reflect modern values. If Christian values (or values of any other religion) reflect the preferences of aj ineffable God, it seems unlikely to me that that God - who, if we are to believe the church, has been pretty anti-gay for tge last two millenia - has now changed his mind. What seems more likely is that the church doesn't really know, and never knew, what God thinks on any given subject, but knows what society thinks and is desperately trying to reflect that back. So the problem isn't that the church is wrong, it's that we listen to the church at all. We shouldn't be telling it what to think or do, we should be gently removing it from the decision-making process.
Western society you mean. In most of Africa and Asia there is no legal homosexual marriage, same with most of Eastern Europe and Italy and in some parts of North Africa and the Middle East and South Asia homosexuality is still illegal.
For those who are members of churches the position of that Church is significant. If the Church of England as the established church in England allows its clergy to conduct same sex marriage in England if they wish that will be a significant moment (Jesus for example never said anything against homosexual marriage)
But the church in those places is imply reflecting those societies' value back at it too. The problem is not that the church's - any church's views are 'wrong' - it is that the church doesn't have the insight it claims into what 'right' and 'wrong' are: the fact that its views are so mutable, and always seem to match the views of the society it operates within, suggest very strongly that it doesn't 'know' what God thinks, it is just winging it based on what it thinks society wants to hear. It is therefore adding no value to the decision making process. I'm not saying religion should be abolished - I do think it has a value - but that value isn't to the decision making process. Those of us who don't believe should neither tell those who do what they should think, nor pay any mind to what churches think the 'right' course of action is - because they have no more insight than anyone else.
Disestablish. Don't let religious organisations act as state registrars. Obviously let people get married in any religious ceremony they want. Just make them go to the registry office afterwards if they want a state-registered marriage. Of course churches should be allowed to say what they think is right and wrong. (And perhaps they do sometimes have more insight than those who don't think much about what's right and what's wrong. I'll judge that on each issue.)
No because if the Church of England allows homosexual marriages by its priests then the moment you disestablish the Roman Catholic Church, which takes a much harder anti gay marriage line, almost certainly becomes the largest Christian church in England within a decade again.
So you end up with an even harder line national Christian Church than you have now.
I also as a member of the Church of England would object to being forced to go to a registry office service I don't see as validating my marriage as well as the C of E service I do think validated it
But the Catholic Church doesn't become the national church, because: 1) If the CofE is any good, it will retain its numbers. And if it isn't, it doesn't deserve to stay as the 'national church'; but more importantly 2) in the scenario DJ41 describes, we don't have a national church at all. The secular majority simply stop listening to what the church say. The churches are free to say whatever they want, but the rest of us don't have to pay them any heed.
Do you object to registering the birth of your child in a registry office? If not, why would you object to registering your marriage? It only needs to be a 5 minute job telling the state about it. You can still celebrate it, properly, in as much depth as you consider appropriate, in a church, in front of your friends, family and God. A quick trip to Epping Registry office with your new wife when you return from honeymoon to fill in a form doesn't strike me as onerous.
Yes it does. In virtually every other nation where Christians are the majority or plurality religious group, the Roman Catholic Church is the largest religious denomination. The only other exceptions are nations like Denmark where the Lutheran Church of Denmark is the established church or South Africa or Ghana where Pentecostal evangelical churches are the largest Christian group.
If the Church of England was disestablished most of the Anglo Catholics would become Roman Catholic and most of the evangelicals would become Pentecostal or Baptist as is the case in the USA for example where the Episcopalian Church is a smaller largely liberal church with hardline evangelicals and Catholics pushing against abortion and gay marriage.
The latter of course means the Christian churches become increasingly pushing a political agenda and free of being established don't give a toss what the secular majority think. Indeed with immigrants tending to be more socially conservative Christians and Muslims too.
Signing a form to register your child is not the same as having to have a second baptism service at a registry office
Russia?
Well the Eastern Orthodox Church is basically the Roman Catholic Church just with a Patriarch not Pope and even more ornate ceremony
Okaaaayyyyyy....
I clearly missed that time the Catholics allowed lay clergy below the rank of bishop to marry.
Michael Cerularius would be spinning in his grave at HYUFD's comments.
I am actually with HYUFD here. The Orthodox and Catholic feud is the narcissism of small differences. They are both the remaining State Church of the Roman Empire. A bit like Italian and Spanish both being legacy vulgar Latin.
Where I don't agree is the conflating of Pauline marriage and Old Testament marriage. Pauline marriage is the Roman view: the strict lifelong monogamy as demanded by Jesus, but with added homophobia. Old Testament marriage allowed hundreds of wives, plus concubines, plus sex slaves. That's worst than Muslim marriage, which is up to four wives plus sex slaves. Ironically the adaption from polygamy to monogamy between the OT and the NT is exactly the mindset of the religious establishment adapting the views of God to contemporary society that the Anglicans are now doing today.
Depends which part, the Ten Commandments forbade adultery
Remember, it's not premarital sex if you never get married.
In the Bible Corinthians opposes sex outside marriage and immorality as does the Koran at 24:2 (including lashings for unmarried fornicators)
Well, if you're (still) talking about gay marriage, don't forget Leviticus 20:13: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death"
Never mind this namby-pamby stuff about no gay marriages in church. Bible-believing Christians should be campaigning for the death penalty for sodomy.
(Evening all)
Hmm.
It seems strange to insist on making an evaluation based on a nugget pulled from about 1200 BC, ignoring the 3000 years of development since.
Especially when the New Testament itself sets a new context for such passages.
By analogy a comment on Human Rights in UK Law would be based on the fact that in 1400 or 1500 or 1550 it was normal practise to torture people in this country, and would ignore everything since.
Is Sturgeon the only solicitor in Scotland who skipped lectures on ultra vires?
In fairness, it is one issue where the boilerplate comments about how "X shows Scotland needs to be independent to do Y" would actually be true, since it's a dispute about the limitations of devolved power, not merely a dispute over some political argument (though it is also that).
The outrage that devolved governments are not wholly sovereign may be a bit overblown (despite this sort of action being a nuclear option not used before it seems), but it is for once directly relevant to Independence genuinely being the answer.
Comments
https://twitter.com/NetworkRailWssx/status/1614911991671394306
Disruption on the line this morning due to a Volcano erupting and blocking the up line
@NetworkRailWssx
That is tomorrow.
Scottish Green MSP Maggie Chapman on @LBC just now said that for the UK Government "even to threaten to act is entirely inappropriate" and they would be "playing roughshod with devolution". #GRRBill
She said she couldn't possibly know what sex she was because she had never had her chromosomes tested..
https://twitter.com/lnmackenzie1/status/1615030116408610817
Meanwhile, precisely because she's acting as though she's President of Scotland, Westminster is looking for an excuse to slap her down and remind her she isn't.
The irony that it's over something as tangential as this is probably more apparent than real. If anyone took this subject especially seriously they would have thrashed it out in advance to ensure this didn't happen.
Saying it is an inappropriate and political use of devolution procedures makes more sense than claiming it rides roughshod with them.
Let's see what tomorrow morning brings...
That's not riding roughshod over the devolutionary settlement, it's upholding it.
Of course, whether the government does have the power in this case is another question and I assume will end up before the courts (again).
Meanwhile the Scottish health and education services continue to struggle and Glasgow and Dundee continue to be bracketed among the most dangerous cities in Europe to live in outside actual war zones.
If you think that the London teachers are (a) so frequent and (b) so much better paid as to bring the average to 102K then maybe you are counting to a different base. Base 7 and a half, perhaps?
Plus you're flat wrong about the 400K. Read your source again.
That would clearly need to be a very high bar, one that has never before been reached and despite the cases made by opponents I don't think that bar has been reached, and therefore the decision of the Scottish Parliament should prevail (just as they should be granted a referendum, because the elected Parliament for Scotland has voted for one), but I think it remains a case of judging whether the use of such a provision is necessary (not simply reasonable) in some way, since so long as there is a UK state, a carve out for the UK government for some extreme situation seems like a safeguard that should be there. If there is no reason to ever say no even in theory to the Scottish parliament it really should just be independent.
Which, of course, even some on the fence will probably feel about this particular decision. Which I'd understand, I don't think the government can defend this decision as a uniquely justifying measure for an action they have never undertaken before. I just feel that ruling out the possibility such a decision could be appropriate, by saying it would outrageous in all circumstances, in effect, goes one smidge too far.
https://twitter.com/paulbranditv/status/1615044986831048713
Never mind this namby-pamby stuff about no gay marriages in church. Bible-believing Christians should be campaigning for the death penalty for sodomy.
What might happen is a revival of online learning from the early days of Covid. If anyone can be found to run that. Doesn't help with the childcare aspect of schools, which is what is really going to annoy people.
Though of course homosexuality is punishable by death in Afghanistan and some parts of the Middle East even today unfortunately
I don't have an opinion on the Scottish Bill, it's their business.
The Tories are playing politics with people's lives.
This is a full-frontal attack on our democratically elected Scottish Parliament and it's ability to make it's own decisions on devolved matters. @scotgov will defend the legislation & stand up for Scotland’s Parliament. If this Westminster veto succeeds, it will be first of many
https://twitter.com/NicolaSturgeon/status/1615047894402273283
Scottish education, eh?
One major application in my ward and the one over, for over 4,000 houses. Six major developers involved. We've worked with them, it's a strategic site, and has been given outline approval. They said at the committee meeting that they would build out over 25 years. When asked why not do it quicker (we need houses sooner rather than later, and there are six major developers involved), it wasn't due to resource constraints but simply "for supply and demand control." They fear building out rather than dribbling it out would slow price increases.
And we can't force them.
But perhaps I'm out of date with "traditional Christianity". Things change so fast these days.
And remember - you claimed ""Given the average secondary school headteacher earns £102,000 a year".
One of us pointed out that the next problem was that sorting out all the consequences required modificastion to equality rights law which remained within Westminster remit, so basically the Scottish Pmt were damned whatever they did if HMG and the Tories wanted to obstruct.
include the death penalty for
homosexuality
And yet you continue to hold forth.
Could you be more absurd if you tried?
Otherwise you wouldn't be Christian you would be Jewish, or given the overlap of much of the Old Testament with the Koran, Muslim.
You can of course reintroduce the death penalty for homosexuality and fornicators if that is what you demand given Christians and Muslims are still the majority of the UK population
> First Minister & SNP get to wave the Saltire (aka Four Blue Triangles?)
> Prime Minister, his Sec for North Britain & CUP get to wave the Union Jack (Jock north of the Border?)
> Trans-activists AND opponents get to re-debate from Wight to Wick (the Woke and the Wack?)
> PBers ditto (ditto?)
One thing that will make it harder for Joe Biden (or almost any other Democrat) to win the presidency is the way the Democrats have given up on much of the country.
There is a neat example of that in the current House leadership.
https://www.house.gov/leadership
The Democratic Leader is Hakeem Jeffries, representing the 8th New York district (Brooklyn).
The Democratic Whip is Katherine Clark, representing the 5th Massachusetts district, which covers suburbs north and west of Boston.
The Democratic Caucus Chairman is Pete Aguilar, representing California's 33rd district, consisting of cities in San Bernardino County.
The Assistant Democratic Leader is James Clyburn, representing the 6th district of South Carolina. Most of the district is in black areas of cities such as Charleston, but it does include predominately black rural areas, as well.
In the US, it is common for parties to have "tickets" that are balanced geographically and, to some extent, ideologically. There is no one in that group from Texas or Florida, or any place in the Midwest. Only Clark represents a suburban district, though a majority of Americans now live in suburbs. All four can fairly be described as urban progressives.
With the exception of Clyburn, there is no one in the leadership who might have much direct contact with rural areas.
This is the right course of action in principle. The Scottish gender reform bill has some detrimental impacts on the protections the Equality Act provides for Scottish women & girls. V likely will end up in the courts.
https://twitter.com/soniasodha/status/1615043378806198276
I highly doubt a third of PBers now would vote Tory or RefUK, it clearly leans on average left liberal now
* see how insane we can get - we don't care - we're f*cking mental
* you English b*stards stop us doing stuff - it shows what you're like, and it shows that our own view of ourselves is utterly correct - isn't that right, lads?
You're looking at it like a lawyer.
If Rishi Sunak had found something more interesting to spend his time looking at and responding to than this loony sh*t from the big Scottish town hall (and who could blame him?), the McVolkisch YeSNP nutters would just have pushed the envelope further. Eventually he'd have had to respond.
What Sunak may find he should do is say "I've had e-f*cking-nough of this. You talk loony sh*t and you don't represent the Scottish people. Let's test that, shall we? Labour and the LibDems haven't had the guts to call for a Scottish general election. Well I'll tell you what. I'm calling a c*nting independence referendum. It's going to be on [date]. If you want 16 year old McLaddies who think they're really McLassies to be able to hoik their kilts in the toilet cubicles next to yours, ladies, or next to your sisters' and wives' and daughters' cubicles, gentlemen, vote for the loony option on [date]. Up to you."
Then the YeSNP will say, "[Date]? What do you mean, [date], you foreign git? We want it on [McDate]."
It could be argued that the above would be playing the YeSNP's game... But would that be accurate? The wind does seem to be blowing towards an indyref rerun, so the perception of who is doing what to whom to trigger it is important.
Don't think this is 4d chess from Sturgeon. Think she really believes in it.
https://twitter.com/bencooper/status/1615046756177436672
As in "I may know no Swahili, but I have the right to translate it without contradiction from someone who does."
Probably, rounding off, urban areas have about 30 percent of the population, suburban areas 50 percent, and rural areas about 20 percent. Suburban areas would have a higher proportion of the total vote in most elections, since voters in suburbs are more likely to vote.
“Update the Equality Act to make clear the characteristic sex is biological sex”
https://petitionmap.unboxedconsulting.com/?petition=623243
All Scots Tory voters past, present and future will be opposed to measures which reduce the age of changing gender to 16, and will be less than keen on the potential compromising of women-only spaces. And, moreover, as a tidy bonus, they have J K Rowling onside!
Plus there is the added bonus that many on the SNP side are deeply uncomfortable with the measure (although they will no doubt unite against Westminster intervention.) And, of course, poor old Labour are in disarrayon the issue.
It would just incentivise whatever was popular/the consensus at the time.
We, along with others, have raised this as a key issue with government and MSPs, and in the media, over several years. This thread brings together examples of that.
https://twitter.com/mbmpolicy/status/1615010394896056322
The Scottish Government didn’t even try to address issues:
THREAD: In January last year, we submitted an FoI to the Scotland Office, to find out what approaches the Scottish Govt had made to it over the GRR Bill, since the second Scottish consultation closed, on 17 March 2020. It held no records of any.
https://twitter.com/mbmpolicy/status/1615058094932856832
It's not as though there's been a moderate government in Westminster that might have given them more latitude in that time. So they presumably just didn't bother.
Seems like a Kobayashi Maru for him there.
Hmm.
It seems strange to insist on making an evaluation based on a nugget pulled from about 1200 BC, ignoring the 3000 years of development since.
Especially when the New Testament itself sets a new context for such passages.
By analogy a comment on Human Rights in UK Law would be based on the fact that in 1400 or 1500 or 1550 it was normal practise to torture people in this country, and would ignore everything since.
The outrage that devolved governments are not wholly sovereign may be a bit overblown (despite this sort of action being a nuclear option not used before it seems), but it is for once directly relevant to Independence genuinely being the answer.