Gay church blessings and a crisis of faith

As clergymen are warned they could be sued if they refuse to carry out homosexual "marriages" in church, what will the Equality Bill mean for religious doctrine?
by Damian Thompson
06 Mar 2010

Excerpt:
On Tuesday night, the House of Lords passed an amendment to the Equality Bill tabled by the gay Labour peer Lord Alli. As a result, the Bill now removes the ban on civil partnership ceremonies being held in places of worship. If passed in its current form, the doors of churches will be thrown open to what are effectively gay weddings – not as a result of a narrow and bitter vote in a Church Synod, but by political fiat.

And if they refuse to comply? The front page of Thursday's Daily Telegraph spelled it out: "Vicars to be sued over gay weddings". And not just vicars, but Catholic priests, rabbis, imams, ministers of the (gay-unfriendly) Church of Scientology – to say nothing of soft-voiced ministers of the Kirk.

This was not a headline the Government wanted to read, just weeks before a general election. Indeed, it seems as if the Cabinet had not been expecting, and didn't welcome, Lord Alli's amendment. Harriet Harman's Equality Bill was already controversial enough, without forcing stony-faced rectors to marry male couples. the rest