In her reply of 18 January 2022 to Changing Attitude England as chair of the Next Steps Group, the Bishop of London, the Rt Revd and Rt Hon Sarah Mullaly wrote that:

“the members of the Next Steps Group are planning to engage with a wide range of stakeholder groups later this year, including members of Changing Attitude, if you accept our invitation to do so. This will come as part of the next phase in our work to support LLF, and we look forward to that conversation in due course.”

Changing Attitude England welcomes this proposal and will respond positively to the invitation. Indeed, we look forward to receiving details of the proposal as a matter of urgency given the limited time scale remaining to the LLF process.

Bishop Sarah said that:

“One of the features of the vision for LLF was to eradicate ‘othering’. In inviting the Church to explore what it means to be human, it is intentionally including everyone in that invitation. All of us – including LGBTQIA+ people – including bishops – have much to learn and understand about what it means to be human, to be bodily, sexual beings created in the image of God. LLF is for everyone. No-one should be ‘othered’. Yes, LLF raises questions that have deep personal impact for LGBTQIA+ people (as well as for others), but it does so on the understanding that LGBTQIA+ people are the ‘we’ and the ‘us’. That is why there are so few explicit references to LGBTQIA+ people. They (we) have already been included.”

But we haven’t been and aren’t already included in a material, physical way, and there is clearly no guarantee that we will be fully included at the end of the LLF process in the radical new Christian inclusion proposed by the Archbishops. Only equality in relationship and ministry will achieve that.

We know that asking whether this is your ambition is a pointless question. The primary purpose of LLF is to provide educational material to resource a process designed to “help us think more deeply about what it means to be human and about how to live in love and faith” (LLF Course p.2) “walking alongside people who think differently.” (LLF Course p.59).

The Bishops collusive and cowardly silence

In a powerful post on ViaMedia News Jayne Ozanne called on bishops to ‘come out, wherever you are’. Most members of the House of Bishops have been silenced by institutional diktat and refuse to say publicly where they stand on LGBTQIA+ issues. She speculates that they do this because they don’t want the aggro of having to deal with some of the really vocal, nasty and vociferous homophobic and transphobic members in the Church. But bishops, we need you to come out! pleads Jayne, echoing a call Changing Attitude has made for over two decades. We LGBTQIA+ people need bishops who support the fully equality in ministry and relationships to have the moral courage to say what they really think and break the moral bondage they have committed themselves to. One of the scandals sabotaging the ability of LLF to achieve a breakthrough is that with one exception the gay, lesbian and bisexual bishops do not feel safe enough to come out within the House of Bishops, let alone to the wider Church. As Jayne says, most of us in the Church of England LGBTQIA+ community know who these closeted bishops are – and they are ‘othering’ themselves and their brothers and sisters in the House and Church.

Systematic ‘othering’ in the Church

Women, UKME and disabled people are also systemically ‘othered’ in the Church of England. With them, LGBTQIA+ people are ‘othered’ by groups within the Church if England that object to equal treatment and respect for all. We do not think that the dynamics of ‘othering’ have been sufficiently explored nor the effects adequately or honestly described. Words are easy: action does not automatically follow them. The straight majority and those with the greatest hold on power in the Church are primarily responsible for ‘othering’ minority and vulnerable groups. ‘Othering’ continues through the LLF process by groups such as the Church Society, the Church of England Evangelical Council and the Evangelical Alliance.

LLF and the Church of England are unsafe spaces for many LGBTQIA+ people today. Changing Attitude England is in contact with several people who were involved in formulating the LLF material. All experienced degrees of abuse in the process and some have yet to receive an apology that recognises the damage caused. The Bishop of London ignored the implications of systemic abuse in the Church in her reply. Church of England reports into historic abuse continue to be published with significant reports yet to be published. We are, as a Church, not yet fully aware of the extent and impact of abuse, sexual, physical and spiritual, on LGBTQIA+ people, nor do we fully acknowledge the links between the toxic culture revealed by IICSA and the Church’s distorted view of sexuality.

For the hierarchy it seems that a ‘successful’ LLF process would be one in which people meet across difference and understand each other better, resulting in a change of heart across the Church of England. We wonder what percentage of the membership of the Church of England might need to have engaged in the LLF process for it to result in the change of corporate understanding that produces an effective outcome for LGBTQIA+ people specifically? It is hard to imagine how this change of heart gets gathered, processed, analysed and turned into a report to be published in September 2022 and even more difficult to imagine how the House of Bishops processes this report and turns it into something that General Synod will accept as requiring the change that demonstrates that we are not ‘othered’ but are already included – because we are most certainly not fully included at the moment.

Changing Attitude England awaits the invitation to engage with members of the Next Steps Group.

To support Changing Attitude England’s campaign for a new radical Christian inclusion that grants equality in ministry and relationships to LGBTQIA+ people please join our Facebook group.