Gay Witch Hunts Approved?

Although at times the Church of England has appeared to be supportive of gays, for many that seems to be changing. Recently, the openly gay Canon Jeffrey John was forced to withdraw his nomination as Bishop of Reading. Now, the liberal Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has given his approval to witch hunts and discrimination against gays.

According to the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association, Williams supports the approach of Bishop of Blackburn who, in turn, has stated that "faith-based" employers should retain the legal right to fire or refuse to employ gays. GALHA's response:

"Legal experts and human rights campaigners are extremely concerned about these exemptions and the way they are going to be used - particularly by zealous religious employers - to disadvantage gay people at work. There must be hundreds of gay teachers among the 100,000 who work for church schools. Are they to be safe from overly-devout head teachers who may not want to have gay people on the staff?”

The United States faces a similar problem with the push for greater government funding of "faith-based" social services and the desire of many that those religious groups administering federal funds be allowed to discriminate based upon religion or sexual orientation (but not race or gender, for some reason). GALHA asked for assurances from Williams that anti-discrimination exemptions would not be used by the Church of England to conduct witch hunts against gays.

Archbishop Williams declined to offer any such assurances.

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• Church of England
• Archbishop Rowan Williams