For gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Anglicans
Naughtily I had thought of heading this post ‘Archbishop of Canterbury’s gay wife and children’. I’m sure many would have read it then, thinking that Changing Attitude had reversed its policy and started to do some ‘outing’. But the gay wife and children I’m referring to are those of Archbishop Edward White Benson (1829-1896) and [...]
This weekend I will be attending the Royal Ballet’s production of The Rite of Spring. First performed in Paris in 1913 – when Igor Stravinsky’s modernist music, Nicolas Roerich’s strange sets and costumes and Vaslav Nijinsky’s innovative choreography caused a riot among sections of the audience – The Rite of Spring or Le Sacra du [...]
Lynne Featherstone is a long-term champion of Trans people and it’s great to see her now, as Minister for Equalities, introducing the latest government initiative on behalf of the Trans community. You can see Lynne and listen to her message on a You Tube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCLDCfU3bAo which was produced to accompany and launch the first [...]
I heard a great sermon yesterday, Mothering Sunday. The preacher was apologising for times past when she’d bought into the notion that Mothering Sunday and Mothers’ Day were one and the same, especially services where only the women who were mums with children had been given flowers. How exclusive was that! No, she insisted, Lent [...]
Well, maybe not that momentous, but it was the week in which 4thought.tv on Channel 4 broadcast seven people’s responses to the question ‘is it wrong to change gender?’ It sounds a lot of airtime, but given that each programme is less than 2 minutes long, altogether it didn’t even amount to a quarter of [...]
I can remember reading (and probably still have the newspaper cutting from the late 1990s) about the transition of property tycoon Sam Hashimi into glamorous designer, Samantha Kane. Money was no object and no expense spared to create a ‘perfect female’ image with a jet-set lifestyle and boardroom presence that resembled, in retrospect, the character [...]
It was appropriate to include a Muslim perspective in this week’s 4thought.tv series which is asking the question ‘is it wrong to change gender?’ Shame though that last night’s speaker, Pav Akhtar, is not Trans himself, like the other people in the series. Pav is a courageous man – he and Lord Ali are reputed [...]
Benson Bell is the first Trans man to appear on this week’s 4thought.tv series which is asking the question ‘is it wrong to change gender?’ He is also the first person this week not to appear on his own: he was accompanied by Mary, his girlfriend of three years, and he is just 18 – [...]
Well, that’s what Anglican wit Sydney Smith (1771-1845) thought, quoting our neighbours across the channel: ‘As the French say, there are three sexes – men, women and clergymen.’ Smith himself was of French descent, but of Protestant stock. He was also a clergyman, but a married man. The saying presumably arose because French clergy were [...]
In her powerful message on last night’s 4thought.tv ‘writer, rights campaigner and raver’ Paris Lees named the biggest problem faced by transgender people – the discrimination, bigotry and prejudice that is summed up in the word ‘transphobia’, meaning a strong aversion to trans people. Paris gave a personal example: some people seem to think that [...]
