website:

E-mail:

Saturday

MAY

18th

at

WESLEY’s Chapel, LONDON

The President of the Methodist Conference, the Rev Dr Mark Wakelin will be present and be the keynote speaker at this year’s Public Meeting which will see the launch of our new book, a worship anthology, “Bold I Approach’

Full details on the attached flyer.

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NEW TREASURER WANTED!

After several years of excellent service our present treasurer has expressed the wish to retire, and we are looking for a volunteer to succeed him. If it is something you feel you could do, please send us an e-mail at to find out more of what the job entails.

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NEXT YEAR’S RESIDENTIAL :

For the last few years we have held our annual residential weekend in the late-January, early-February period at Whaley Hall in Derbyshire. The time away has begun on Friday evening and ending after lunch on Sunday, with the programme devised so that Saturday’s events ‘stand alone’. We would like to know your thoughts before we plan for next year:

  • is the time of year right?
  • should we look to a venue in another part of the country?
  • has anyone a suggestion for a venue to explore that they know is ‘gay friendly’

Please e-mail us as soon as possible at with any thoughts.

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2013 METHODIST CONFERENCE

Central Hall, Westminster

July 4th to 11th

Again we will have a stall at Conference and we are grateful to several of our supporters who have offered to staff it during the week. To mark the twentieth anniversary of the 1993 Conference at Derby that passed the Resolutions on Human Sexuality we are to have a

CONFERENCE PUBLIC MEETING

Monday, July 8th at Central Hall

"Twenty Years on from Derby - Looking Back and Looking Forward"

A panel will share their reflections on the journey that the Methodist Church has taken on issues relating to human sexuality and look for pointers to the road ahead. Do join us if you can.

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DATE FOR YOUR 2014 DIARY:

Public Meeting with the by-then President of Conference, Rev Ruth Gee – Saturday, May 31st 2014 in Leeds

Quite some time ago one of our supporters spoke to us about the dilemma of being married and gay. We asked him if he felt able to write an article for inclusion in our newsletter. We are grateful to him for doing so:

Why , you may wonder, did I wait until I was over 50, married with children in varying stages of grown-upness, before ‘coming out’?

I knew from quite young that I was attracted to other males – the first stirrings of sexual attraction I recall was in a church passion tableau (yes, really!), when I was about 9. Those ‘Roman soldiers’ I so fancied, in their tinfoil armour and wooden swords, must have been about 12. Then at school there were other boys, but homosexuality was then, if not a criminal offence, still social leprosy.

Later I met my wife, and the story went on … children, career, and so on. But always underneath, a nagging awareness that there was another ‘me’. Church involvement came and went too: the church’s ambiguity about gays, and at worst hostility, put a cautious distance between myself and a body which I was coming to see as archaic.

Eventually things came to a head: the ambiguity which was coming to presage some sort of personal dis-integration within myself had to be addressed somehow. I was – am – one of the lucky ones. My wife had long realized that I had a ‘gay side’, although she said little. At one stage we had gay and Christian neighbours with whom we became good friends, this helped. She accepted that I needed to be honest about my sexuality, within myself, with others. Although church and I have largely parted company, I’ve had some amazing support from friends across the church (including from ‘Outcome’), some of it unexpected.

If you think coming out to your parents is difficult, try telling your children, they say. Mine didn’t want to know, parents are expected to be there for their children’s’ personal issues but that’s not a 2-way process. I still don’t know if they know, I rather imagine that over the years a kind of drip-feed has made them aware, at least ,that this might be another one of Dad’s weird idiosyncracies. I will always be open to them, but I won’t push it.

Others haven’t been so lucky. I joined two web-based groups; in ‘Gaydads UK’ I heard some tragic stories of men who after years of anguish tried to be open and honest, only to be rejected by wives and family, living in rented rooms, working to support the children they love but are rarely allowed to see, or purchase the home they can no longer live in.

‘Closed loop relationships’ seemed like a great theory though unlikely to work in practice. The idea is that married men who identify as gay find a match who can be a friend and support, morally as well as sexually. Then online I ‘met’ someone in a similar situation who lived not far away. At first we were very coy about religion, but gradually my Methodist baggage became visible, as did his Catholicism. And here’s a stranger thing that although this ‘C.L.R.’ doesn’t fit my relationship templates it has resurrected, sharpened, a sense of the divine in the ordinary. We both believe that life is essentially sacramental. We share a great deal besides the occasional bed.

And oddly enough, this relationship has enabled me to stay married more comfortably. My wife knows that I tell her who I’m with, where I am, and when I’ll be home. I’m very lucky. Where will it all end? Who knows?

THOUGHTS ON SAME-SEX MARRIAGE

The Methodist Council has this month recommended to Conference that a working group be set up to consider the Church’s position of a change in legislation covering same-sex marriage and to consider “whether the Church’s position on marriage needs revising in the light of changes in society.” Outcome responded at the appropriate time to the government consultation and both our response and the official response of the Methodist Church can be found via our website.

The following thoughts on the matter formed part of the input to Outcome’s public meeting last June.

“It’s love that makes the world go round” The words may be from a musical, but that’s true to our deepest understanding of God’s relationship to his creation.

Down the ages human beings have sought to affirm and celebrate human love, and to find channels for that love that bring about the betterment, growth, maturity of the individuals concerned and society as a whole.

Sadly, for the church, the elephant in the room, and for some a very dark spectre, is sex. That can be seen in grudging official statements of the mainstream churches thus far, that generally bring in gays and lesbians from the cold, but then push them down again with pronouncements that have decided stings in the tail!

But what about those gay relationships, of which more and more come to light, that have lasted over long years, which have stood the test of time and the hard knocks of life, where for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health each has loved and cherished the other?

What about the situation contained in a letters from a friend of one of our Co-ordinating Group, who wrote: “On February 19, 2005, Doug and I celebrated our 40th Anniversary as life partners and held a celebration here at our home in Palm Springs. Doug and I were happy and content, and very proud of our 40 years of love, mutual respect and faithfulness. Nine days later I took Doug to the emergency room at Desert Regional Hospital and 10 hours later Doug was admitted and we were told he had cancer with at most two months to live.....He is now experiencing extreme fatigue and has lost his hair. He remains in bed a great deal of the time due to the fatigue and although he can still stand with some help, he finds it easier to be in a wheelchair. Despite all the above, Doug has not lost his abiding faith in our risen Lord, and it is this faith that affords Doug the peace that he has attained. He has accepted his impending death, lives in the moment and trusts that I will keep him comfortable as we travel our final journey together.”

Five days later came the following e-mail:

“Douglas was lifted up to the merciful arms of Jesus, Friday, April 15, at 11:27 P.M. As I had promised, I held him in my arms as he died. May he rest in peace.”

The words in a recent article in the Times by Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford echo tellingly: “Marriage has been what human beings have made it to fit the reality of their lives, and express their deepest longings” (The sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath)