Hi Andy (and Sass too, because this is relevant to a private conversation we’ve had 
) –
Andy the complimentary ‘Wow!’ is returned is returned to you 
. Your post is so helpful – and I don’t think progress with legislation in the USA is a ‘bally awful mess’ 
; it sounds confusing but you have a huge country with such variety to somehow unify and reach consensus in.
Civil partnerships for gay people should not be a problem with Christians in my view, however much they may think gay relationships are ‘sinful’ – this is not a matter of conscience; it is rather a matter of ‘loving the sinner’ if you see things in this way. It is an affront to human dignity that any dedicated couple should fall foul of inheritance law etc. and if Christians are not concerned about this they are giving bad testimony for Christ. According to one poll published here it seems quite a lot of gay people in the UK (as many as 60%) are not fussed about gay marriage as such – as it seems is also the case in the US. I think people need to have a debate about what marriage means legally and religiously – and bear in mind the distinction between civil marriage and marriage in a Church when deciding this issue; it’s only fair that all should have an informed debate
Now regarding the Church of England and the First amendment of the American Constitution– what a very interesting topic to raise 
(and something that Sass has also raised with me) . IT’s not immediately related to the question of gay rights but it has a big bearing on this issue and other issues of freedom and acceptance – so I’ll give it a look. We don’t even have a written constitution or Bill of Rights in the UK – but the whole muddle of ancient charters and institutions’ have tended to work for the common good and for the protection of liberty (especially since the rigid class system started to break down after the First World War). The Anglican Church is part of our muddled but workable settlement in England (and I have a Jewish friend who is a practising Jew but passionate about the importance of the Church of England as a protector of good things – I guess he did spend the happiest years of his life at a Church of England School where he felt loved accepted and included , so he may be biased)
However, kooky and funky our different styles and ways of liberty may well seem from the other side of a very large pond , but I am convinced that our different traditions of liberty in the USA and the UK have common roots.
Roger Williams the governor of Rhode Island whose writings anticipated the separation of Church and State was born in England and his thinking was influenced by the English Universalist sect The Seekers.
John Milton – the English poet of Christian liberty is also a common treasure, I understand that a verse from his ‘Areopagtica’ – a defence of the free press is inscribed over a portal in your Senate building. And I note that a sizeable number of settlers from America returned to England to fifth for Parliament in the English Civil War.
John Locke the Anglican who wrote a famous essay ‘On Toleration’ influenced both the Founding fathers of America and the party of tolerance in the seventeenth and eighteenth century Church of England (who won the day!)
Tom Paine, who greatly influenced the American Revolutionaries, was an Englishman of Quaker stock and his ‘Rights of Man’ shows clear Quaker influences as well as continental Enlightenment ones.
And the whole of the older universalist tradition in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was fully behind religious tolerance and by extension other types of political tolerance. The argument went something like ‘- The true Church is an invisible church and should not be identified with any particular sect or party. Everyone is being added to this CHurhc in God’s own good time. Therefore in the season of the wheat and the tares complete tolerance should be allowed in all matters of religion and conscience – truth should not fear error or truth ceases to be truth
Anyway – regarding the First Amendment – for the benefit of non-Americans, I understand the wording of this is -
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
It interesting that there appears to be a divergence of opinion on what this actually means between the Christian Right and most of the rest of America. Since this issue was actually alluded to in Tim’s article that is the catalyst for this thread, I’d like to quote some stuff written by the American Professor of Religious Studies, Walter H. Capps, during the Regan years because I think it places the gay rights issue and other issues of liberty in clear context (hope you ifnd it interesting)
*On the first amendment:
What is the moral of the story of America, and how can we expect this story to develop?..
’For it is not a story about the successful creation of a Christian America, or an account of how the United States was itself transformed into some desecualrized theocratic state, Rather we expect it eventually to be an exhibit regarding the continuing triumph of the First Amendment sensibilities. And the story line goes something like this, namely, that approximately two hundred years after the constitution was signed and the Bill of Rights drafted there was a crisis in the land regarding the status of religious freedom. The [then]President of the United States, Ronald Regan, invoked the First Amendment in of his view that Thomas Jefferson’s famous ‘wall of separation’ between church and state was designed, as he put it, ‘to protect religion from the tyranny of government.’ And he was supported in this view by millions of evangelical Christians, large numbers of whom had been incited to action by recognition that the spiritual vitality of the nation had been adversely affected by pervasive moral degeneration. To recover from this condition, this reconstituted conservative evangelical force offered a vision of what could (and should) obtain on the basis of biblical images…presented with literal explicitness and dogmatic authority [but actually a specific selection of images and texts, interpreted in a specific way, often a rather modern way without ancient authority].
For a time the effort was remarkably successful. For a time the movement’s leaders did secure the attention of the people. For a time it even appeared that hits reconstituted religious and political force might make some headway, because its leadership seemed to comprehend something of the nature of the challenge. But in formulating their response they betrayed the constitutional principle that religious pluralism is the primary protector of religious freedom (and all freedom).
That same Thomas Jefferson whom President Regan loved to cite wrote some sobering words in the opening paragraphs of the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom in 1779 (passed by the Virginia senate in 1786). IN this document Jefferson asserted that Almighty God has created the mind free so that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishment or burdens…tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy Author of our religion.’’ He also rebuked some legislators for presuming that they enjoyed ‘dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as being true ad infallible,’’ and he suggested that this is the process through which ‘false religions’ have been ‘established and maintained’ throughout the world. He asserted that ‘our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions,’’ and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.’’ In the final paragraph of the statement Jefferson asserted that these religious freedoms belong to ‘’ the natural rights of mankind,’’ so that ‘if any act shall hereafter be passed to repeal the present, or to narrow its operation, such an act will be an infringement of natural right.’’
On Frances Schaeffer – as a representative figure of the Christina Right
One can find biblical warrants for the Schaeffer position, if one searched selectively enough, and reads the Scripture from his theological vantage. But there are other perspectives on the subject, and here are other biblical supports for additional and alternative views. In this regard, there is nothing in the religion that forces the reader to place emphasis upon Jesus’ words, ‘’I came not to bring peace but a sword.’’ to the virtual exclusion of any personal attention to the need to create a society in which justice and righteousness prevail. There is nothing in the religion that requires the believer to fix attention on biblical and/or dogmatic statements that speak of the exclusivity of Jesus Christ without regard for the statements that the God the Christians worship is the God of all peoples, who desired the well being of the earth.
Nicholas F. S. Grundtvig, the great nineteenth century Danish theologian, poet and bishop…was fond of employing the principle ‘’human first, then Christian’’ to clarify for believers how they were to relate to others, and understand their own stats in a world that is understood to be the creation f the living God. According to Grundtvig’s view, any diminishment or foreshortening of any natural human capacity, even in support of the cause of religion, constitutes a direct violation of this divinely ordered formula. Francis Schaffer would reverse this sequence. He believed it to be an essential article of faith that the genuinely human is that which is born again. This, then, is to limit the genuinely human to that which is specifically Christina [the latter being defined in a controversial and sectarian sense that is open to question anyway]. It is to require a person to become born again if human life is to posses any substantial meaning and worth. And the world itself must be born again if it is to become the occasion for genuine satisfaction or pleasure…Approaching every form of faith in humanity with deepest suspicion, and manifesting a kind of ‘world weariness’ of his won, his only recourse is to advocate some idealized alternative that can only be portrayed in the very sharpest contract to the order of life that prevails.
By way of contrast to Schaeffer, St. Iraneus, Bishop of Lyon, talked of the gospel in terms of the vision of ‘’Christ extended lengthwise throughout the entire created world.’’ The force of the imagery was to affirm that if this world is merely a shadow, or a dim reflection of the transcendent , idealized world, then God is not truly God. Iraneus was insistent that the world that human beings experience enjoys real status, which status is undermined when the present world it too sharply distinguished and too thoroughly separated from some idealized society. Furthermore, when declaring that ‘the glory of God is a human being fully alive,’’ Iraneus attested that ‘ the creation is suited for man, for man was not made for creation’s sake, but creation was made for the sake of man.’’ Iraneus’s affirmations apply to this world, and to his own society, as decadent as it may or may not have been, and not to some idealised alternative.
What Iraneus attested to centuries ago must be attested to again: That which deserves to be improved, and perhaps to be transformed, must first be affirmed. When Iraneus made this profession, he understood he was offering a testament of genuine Christian Faith. When the nations’ Founding Fathers described the workings of democracy they knew themselves to be declaring that this world too is of God…*
Well its worth a thought …
Blessings
Dick
. Well I thought/knew we’d probably agree about lots of things – but I think it is just common courtesy to check things out. I feel very at ease now.
)
God has some splain’ to do when I get to heaven!! 
It’s very hard to stay on track with my thoughts and words, so again, I think it best if I keep my sharing here to a minimum. Please indulge me as I try to find my way around my illness and our present situation with the fire. BUT, as a side note, I truly believe that each of us has a story so NO pity for me, please!!! Y’all have your trials and tribulations, sufferings and sorrows, coupled with your joys, happiness, and peace… so we are all in this together. I just don’t want special treatment as I’d rather be praying for one of you (not that I want you to have problems) so that I can get my mind off my selfish self and “do” something for someone else… like pray!!!