This week, the Church of England published a set of resources titled Living in Love and Faith, exploring LGBT+ issues including “identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage”. But while the materials admit the ongoing harm to the LGBT+ community by the Church of England, it said it would not be implementing any changes until at least 2022.

Jayne Ozanne is a British evangelical Anglican who started her foundation to work with “religious organisations around the world to eliminate discrimination based on sexuality or gender in order to embrace and celebrate the equality and diversity of all”.

The Church of England has just published its long-awaited resource on sexuality, which has been three years in the making and involved over 40 people. That is the good news. The bad news is only 5 of the 40 were ‘out’ LGBT+ people!

The resource itself does at least include some LGBT+ voices, who speak from their own experience of the church – experiences of rejection and also, in some places, of the church’s welcome. But it falls far short of what it could and should have been.

The resource provided a much-needed opportunity to clearly state and address the harm that has and is still being done to LGBT+ people. But in this it has singularly failed. While the Archbishops may have recognised the “huge hurt” that has been caused, the report does nothing to address this. Instead, the resource focuses on encouraging people to “listen and learn” from each other.

As such, it asks LGBT+ people to sit down and “listen and learn” from the very people who have inflicted so much harm on them in the first place. Specifically, it encourages those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender to sit and “see the Christ” in those who think that their very identity is “sinful” and that they should instead “transform” themselves so that they become single and celibate – a teaching which has led many to contemplate taking their very lives! Read more via Pink News