In England, the equality laws make it unlawful to discriminate against a person because of their sexual orientation...
Nevertheless, exemptions written into the Act accept that the C of E “does not draw the same distinction as most secular employers between a person’s work life and his or her private life”.
The key factor is the requirement of a bishop to act as a focus of unity. The advice states: “Where someone is in a civil partnership and/or is known to have been in a same-sex relationship, even though now celibate, it is for the CNC . . . to come to a view whether the person concerned can act as a focus for unity because of these matters.”
So. The church is exempted from the practice of equality under the law because the bishop must be a focus of unity. That's absurd. No bishop can possibly be a focus of unity for every single person in the diocese. After all, several bishops left the Church of England to join the Roman Catholic ordinariates. They were hardly a focus of unity, because members of their flock stayed behind in the Church of England. The "focus of unity" reasoning appears to be trumped up for the very purpose of excluding gay persons from the episcopacy.
A CHECKLIST has been drawn up that makes it virtually impossible for an openly gay person to become a bishop in the Church of England.
“[F]actors that can properly be taken into account:• whether the candidate had always complied with the Church’s teachings on same-sex sexual activity;
• whether he was in a civil partnership;
• whether he was in a continuing civil partnership with a person with whom he had had an earlier same-sex relationship;
• whether he had expressed repentance for any previous same-sex sexual activity; and
• whether (and to what extent) the appointment of the candidate would cause division and disunity within the diocese in question, the Church of England and the wider Anglican Communion.”
The checklist leave me speechless, because it evidences such intrusiveness and discrimination against gay persons as to be truly shocking.
Are you bored yet with posts on the Church of England? I'll give you a rest after this one, unless....