This presentation was delivered as part of a general discussion at Synod on the evening of 6 July 2001. The aim of the session was to "raise questions of pastoral care for all involved in the discussion as the church appears to be moving towards change" with regards to "the acceptance of faithful, committed, same sex relationships".

Your Grace, members of Synod:

My name is Chris Ambidge, I'm a cradle Anglican, and I've been a gay man for just about as long - certainly from before my ability to make conscious choices. I no more selected my orientation than I selected blue eyes, or right-handedness.

God created in me - just as in you - an ability to love and a need to be loved. I know in the depths of my soul that for me, intimate love will be for another man. I cannot believe in a god so cruel and spiteful to create those abilities and needs in me, and then say "no-no, you can't use them!"

As things stand, heterosexuals are called on by the church to be celibate outside marriage, and sexually active only within it. Homosexuals do not have any choice. We are told that we may not establish any committed, intimate relationships. The playing field is not level at all.

However, all of us in this church have been baptized - we are all members, one another, in Christ, and every single baptism is as good as the next. There should be no such thing as a second-class Christian, but that is the message that lesbian and gay Anglicans receive. We love this church, because it is a place where we meet Jesus, and because it is home. Many of us are staying. However, many leave, and over the years there has been a huge, albeit silent, leakage: not just of lesbigays, but also our families and friends, leaving because of the way the church treats gays and lesbians, and that is a pastoral problem.

One message I would bring from lesbigay Anglicans is that we do read the Bible, and do govern our lives by the Gospel imperatives. It's our bible too, it's our baptism too - and it's our church too, but some of us have had to leave.

Some go to Metropolitan Community Church, a denomination which has a particular focus on lesbigays . On Christmas Eve MCCToronto fills Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto not once but twice - that's 5000 lesbigay people hungry to hear the Good News of Christ. I'd venture to say that up to a quarter of the people at MCCT were Anglicans at one point. That's evidence of pastoral care gone astray.

Gay and lesbian Anglicans that I know have been told to take their vocation and ministry to the United Church. That is appalling, this is their church home. More pastoral care gone astray.

Those sheep didn't get the care they needed from their Anglican shepherd, so they're now in another flock. We must not outsource our pastoral care of non-heterosexuals.

Twenty-two years ago, the House of Bishops explicitly said homosexuals are fellow Christians with full call on the pastoral resources of the church. This synod in 1995 passed a motion acknowledging and celebrating the presence of gay men and lesbians in the life of our church. The pastoral challenge is to put legs under those statements.

I've been asked to talk about some pastoral needs and opportunities. We need to address these pastoral needs:

• of gay and lesbian individuals whose experience of God has been questioned and ignored because of their sexual orientation



• of lesbian and gay individuals who have more often than not been told they are inferior, incomplete, deviant, and are in need of healing because of who we are.



• Needs of the families and friends of lesbigay individuals



• of those providing pastoral care and spiritual direction - training in dealing with issues of human sexuality and relationship



• and the pastoral need of the whole community to grow up in our ability to deal with matters of sexuality

Allow me to tell a couple of anecdotes that show some of the gaps right now:

I am blessed with many friends who are in same-sex partnerships, and who wish that their church could have blessed their relationships - or rather, to quote Archbishop Crawley, that their church could bless God for the good things which the church sees in the relationship. But it's not just "the wedding day". In weddings, the community promises to support the couple in their future life in Christ. For same-sex partnerships, that support - during better and worse, richer and poorer, sickness and health - is what we really want. At the moment, that's a pastoral need going unmet.

A friend of mine had her primary relationship dissolve a couple of years ago. Because her church and her relationship seemed so separated in her life, she didn't think for a moment of asking for support from her parish in that horrible time - support that should have been there, but isn't. And that's a pastoral need going unmet.

I feel very supported in my parish church, I'd venture a guess that 20-25% of the congregation is lesbigay, because our sexual orientation is a non-issue there. Recently a gay man developed intestinal cancer, and didn't have long to live. Over the six months of his decline, the pastoral care and support of him and his partner, who was also his primary caregiver, were just what you would hope any parish would give. At the funeral, though, and in the obituary in the parish newsletter, scant if any attention was paid to the widowed partner, something which hurt and alienated him very deeply. If my parish, which is pretty good on lesbigay pastoralia, can set a foot wrong that way, then I'm sure it's worse elsewhere. And that's a pastoral need going unmet.

The opposite side of the coin, of course, is opportunity. We have:

1. opportunity to move on the basis of pastoral care of individuals rather than requirement for unanimity of the whole (the "local option)



2. opportunity to be consistent in word and deed ... namely to cease operating within a dualistic framework - 'love the sinner, hate the sin' - pretending we can segment out a person's identity from the nature and quality of their relationships. Let me assure you that it can't be done. As one who has been the target, I know, the message received is hate, not love.



3. opportunity to explore as a community what respecting the dignity of every human being means, both in action and in word - how do we seek and serve Christ in all persons - how do we seek and serve Christ in our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, in our straight brothers and sisters, in those wherever they may fall along the spectrum of human sexuality and expression



4. opportunity to use the resources that lesbigays have to offer the church, especially around pastoral care. As a community we have developed high levels of skill, and deep resources as we have supported each other, and this is available to our church.

At this point, I firmly believe that allowing different dioceses in the church to follow the Spirit as they hear it is the most appropriate approach. This should not, however, occur without ongoing dialogue.

It has been my privilege, over the last six years, to be part of a diocesan dialogue about human sexuality. That dialogue will not have a "winner" or a "loser". To paraphrase the Primatial address: welcome for one group cannot be brought about by creating un-welcome for another. Our conversations are seeking ways that we can all live together in the same church, and it is my prayer that all Anglicans can be made welcome.

Let me leave you with an image: this church has a huMONgous array of worship styles, spike to prot, books maroon to green, pipe organs to guitars. Yet all of us are Anglicans, all in communion with each other. While it is not necessary that all parishes immediately be welcoming of lesbigays, some should be explicitly permitted to be so.

Our church is a big tent - let's make it bigger.

Because of a time limit the last portion of the above text was slightly abbreviated by Chris during the actual delivery.