May 19th

Same Sex Unions went international!

Well, it wasn't quite like that.

In the rushed packing just before going away on holiday we threw in a couple of re-enactment scripts and handouts just in case the friends we met would be interested.

We arrived on La Gomera, one of the Canary Islands, and soon after, our guide informed us, matter-of-factly, that in the little town of Agulo, not far away, it was legal for two men to marry - just as it was in Madrid, in the Basque country and Catalan regions of Spain. And later we checked up, and indeed it was so, at least in Agulo. The mayors of Madrid and Agulo had little in common, but they had both allowed marriage to include same-sex couples.

So far no one on La Gomera had availed themselves of the opportunity, but it's a tiny Island with only 18,000 people, and no one is openly gay.

Re-enactment

Ten of the sixteen holiday makers in our group were interested in the adelphopoiesis ceremony. So in our own room we covered the kitchen units with hangings (towels), moved the refridgerator to the centre, covered with more 'hangings' for the blessing table. We bought candles. The Book of Holy Gospels had to be improvised from a cereal packet, with a bold cross on the front. The 'cover' opened to allow the priest to read the words sellotaped inside. The priest's stole was made of paper, and his tee-shirt and jeans were dark and plain to contrast with it, but otherwise it was a plain-clothes performance.

We used the same version of the script as for the previous three re-enactments, but instead of having two, or only one deacon, we performed it as it would have been in a very small village church, with the priest taking all the clerical parts.

The rehearsal was extremely brief but the four volunteers coped brilliantly.

But it was surprising how well it went. We introduced the concept of sworn brotherhoods - those the Church approved of and those it did not. We outlined the theology of the ceremony as that of two believers, who were born again, and therefore brothers in Christ, and we pointed out that the ceremony recognised a different quality and commitment in the love of the couple, a love that went beyond that of all Christians. The audience listened intently.

The words of the narration - but above all the words of the ceremony - carried us through. The Great Litany, the two first prayers, the placing of hands on the Holy Gospel the holding of candles, and the binding of the couple together worked well even in the very simplified setting, and in plain clothes.

The couple mimed exchanging torques, since we had neither time nor materials to make them. But we did process round the blessing table three times in the limited space available.

Importantly, the two readings were heard clearly in the small, silent room, and they are crucial to understanding what the ceremony is doing and what it is not.

In retrospect it would have been better not to pack the whole thing into half an hour. There were all sorts of good questions asked afterward, but some of the issues should have been dealt with more clearly at the outset, to allow the discussion to probe deeper. Particularly someone asked why the prayers repeated 'not by the way of the flesh but by faith and the Holy Spirit' - was this saying it was not a sexual relationship? And I repeated the words from John 1 v13, and the theology of being born again, "not by the fleshly lust of an earthly father, but by faith and the Holy Spirit". It is explicitly sexual conception that is disparaged, not the same-sex sexual relationship. But I had skimmed over this in the introduction, and the audience should have had this interpretation clearly in mind, to see if it fitted the words of the ceremony.

And it would have been good to have included the Sergius and Bacchus story, as this explains the prayers that the couple should be saved from hatred and stumbling; from the jealously of others.

The minimal performance went so well because the words and actions were powerful enough on their own.

To comment on this page, click the email link here.