Royal Weddings..

Good monring God
Here we go again.. another Royal Wedding to delight the masses. Forgive me if I can't get that excited about two highly privileged people who have decided to do what thousands of other people are not yet allowed to do by the laws of this land - regardless of how much they love one another. 

And yes, what troubles me most is the way in which the Church colludes with this.

The Church has a stake in marriage, you could almost say that it has defined what Marriage is meant to be. From being a legal contract defining possession of goods, it has been transformed into a 'holy state', a 'Sacrament' even,  but most of all - an expression of love.

But it is this relationship between love and marriage that makes our current laws so repulsive and offensive. By refusing to allow same sex couples to marry, the law is essentially saying that some people do not have the right to love, or do not have the right sort of love..
So says the law - and so says the Church..

Shame on us.
Shame on the way we use our oh so clever theological and biblical arguments and Church discipline to defend such injustice. If you have seen fit to let love flourish between two people God,  then who on earth are we to deny either its validity or acceptability? Do we really think that you, the God of love, are best served by our denial of love just because we are uncomfortable about the sexual dimension of a relationship?

As a result of the Royal Wedding next year many more young couples will decide they really do want to get married. Some will be able to. Some will not. Not because they can't afford to, or because they don't love one another enough to make this life-time commitment but because society will not let them. It is a lie to say we are an open tolerant society. The fact is that civil partnerships are not the same as marriage. Both legally binding forms of relationship should be open to all,  otherwise all we are doing is practicing a form of love-apartheid.

And the Church could lead the way.. it could have the courage to face the fact that you love everyone and that, in spite of our protestations, you do not partition us by either our gender or our sexuality. You give us all the gift of love and the ability to express it.
It's time to own up to the fact that you did not create marriage - humans did, as a way of keeping control of certain things(women and their money mainly!).
That you have blessed the state of matrimony is amazing, a gift of grace - but surely that makes it all the more important that marriage should be open to all your children?

If the Church were to clamor for marriage to be open to all - the state would very quickly concur.
What on earth are we waiting for - a Royal civil partnership?