What's missing in the gay marriage debate?

The CofE has announced a consultation exercise on the live issue of gay marriage, which I suppose is a step forward. This may be simply the kind of consultation much favoured by recent governments, where the appearance of openness and listening is simply a pause for breath before absolutely nothing changes and we return to business as usual. But perhaps I'm a little cynical, and should wait for the report.

At one level, the debate is certainly about language, words and metaphors. This is not to trivialise it, because the words and metaphors that enfold and express our deepest personal stories and meanings are not just dictionary entries. My empty, dry and hollow meanings may be fruitful and life-giving to another person. What leaves me unmoved may well enliven another's life in ways that I might do well to learn from. So I pose the question to myself; "Why is the gay community so bothered about the meaning of this word?" And in posing it I hope that I open myself to learning something new.

But at another level, perhaps the question can be framed thus: "What is missing from the language of civil partnerships?" Immediately I can provide a kind of answer, purely at the level of language. You don't have to be a poet to feel the difference in emotional and spiritual charge between the two metaphors. Marriage as a word has a richness to it that 'civil partnership' entirely lacks.  It is perhaps something like the comment I have heard a million times from well-meaning churchgoers, that registry office weddings are somehow not 'doing it properly'.

But what, exactly, is that missing element? Let me venture my thoughts, in search of an answer.  The state can join two people together in (now choose your own wording) legal marriage or civil partnership. But the state, it seems to me, is not able to bless. And this is the (or perhaps one of the) missing element. The blessing of a relationship seems to grow more naturally out of some spiritual and cultural context which is most often provided by a faith tradition, or by someone who carries some kind of eldering role in the social context or tribe from which we come.  The blessing seems to arise at least in part because of the shared communal story or metaphor - we all agree that this is how this rite of passage works in our group. At least in some part, we all share the same values, the same understandings, perhaps the same god. Blessing is harder to find where there is no shared story, or where there is a lack of agreement or of authenticity. And I have attended many traditional one-man-one-woman weddings where there has been no sense of blessing at all, so this seems to have nothing to do with gender. And these days there are many organisations (here's one: http://www.osif.org.uk) that are happy to bless authentic, loving relationships and to regard them as marriages.

The CofE finds itself in a bind here precisely because it is the established church, and provides both the legal functions of the state and the spiritual blessing of the elder or priest. So it is a good thing that this question arises for the organisation that wears both hats. Other churches and faith traditions have the same questions to answer, of course.

And, in my view, changing the language will go some way to resolving the issue, maybe the whole way for some, but it won't solve everything for everyone. Language is certainly a part of authenticity, but when meanings are not shared even though language is, the coin rings a little less true.  

The challenge to the CofE and other faith traditions all is to work out not whom to bless, but whether they want to be the kind of organisation that is so utterly sure of its ground that it can withhold the blessing of God from people it chooses to exclude, and whom Jesus would probably have hung out with.