The Canadian Press
TORONTO—A passionate debate on whether Anglicans should bless same-sex marriages came to a head yesterday when delegates to their triennial conference narrowly voted against authorizing such unions.
The vote by General Synod 2016, which followed complaints of bullying and intimidation, sparked bitter disappointment among some members.
“It is breaking my heart that there are people who see gay marriage as a separation from God and from love,” said Eliot Waddingham, 24, a transgender person from Ottawa who was an observer.
The vote, Waddingham worried, was tantamount to a “death sentence” for the church.
More than 200 delegates to the six-day synod just north of Toronto rejected the resolution after more than 60 speakers lined up to make their points, with most speaking in favour of it.
To pass, the resolution to change the church’s marriage canon required two-thirds of the delegates to vote “yes” in each of three orders: lay, clergy, and bishops.
The bishops’ group had indicated in February that the threshold likely would not be met.
Indigenous bishops also had said they would resist having “Western cultural approaches” imposed on them.
However, the resolution failed to pass because the order of clergy failed narrowly—by as little as a single vote—to get the required two-thirds majority.
The other two houses—laity and bishops—narrowly attained the threshold.
Many immediately expressed bitterness and sadness.
“Woah. One vote,” Rev. Jeremy Smith said in a tweet.
“Prayers for all those wounded by the anti-LGBTQ vote.”
The electronic voting essentially was conducted secretly at the request of delegates as a privacy measure.
Earlier, Archbishop Colin Johnson of Toronto cited his own decades of marriage in arguing in support of the motion.
“I want my gay and lesbian colleagues to have the same joy,” Johnson said.
“I believe it’s the right thing to do.”
One lesbian, in pleading for adoption of the resolution, said “many of us” had killed themselves because “death was better than being rejected by God.”
However, other speakers urged delegates to reject the idea of same-sex marriage, with one saying it would cause “ghettos of resentment” if allowed.
Several aboriginal delegates, meanwhile, denounced the resolution as condoning an “abomination” and disobedience of God.
“God did not create another Adam,” said one young speaker. “He created a woman.”
The vote was the culmination of three years of work that began when the last General Synod, the church’s legislative body, asked a panel to come up with the draft motion.
Even if it had passed, the decision still would have needed to be affirmed by the next General Synod in 2019, which could have made its own amendments.
