Day 2751: One Lone Heckler

Sunday:


Bishop Gene Roddenberry (not to be confused with Star Trek's Tom Robinson!) is the ONLY gay bishop in the WORLD. Because there has never, ever, EVER been a gay bishop before, oooh no, and certainly none of the eight or nine hundred OTHER Anglican bishops could possible sing with the other choir, no, not a single one.

He is also the ONLY bishop to be excluded from the Beardy-Weirdy of Canterbury's big religious meeting.

IRONIC then, that he came along uninvited to speak anyway… only for a mental-fundieist to come along to HIS religious meeting uninvited and try to speak anyway?

Here's the DIFFERENCE, though.

After the hard-liners heard that Bishop Roddenberry wasn't even invited to Lambeth… they refused to come anyway because the Archpillock hadn't excommunicated and/or burned him.

After the young protester had been persuaded to leave, his heckles drowned out by the congregation SINGING, Bishop Roddenberry, moved to tears by the support of his flock, asked them to pray for him.

Of course, you know what THEY are thinking: crying in church… how GAY is that.


Earlier in the day, Bishop Roddenberry had been on Mr Andy Marrmite's sofa with Dame Ian McKellen.


Asked about the way the Church was getting its knickers in a twist, the bishop admitted that he thought it was probably a MISTAKE for them to talk about gay ISSUES and deliberately exclude the one openly gay VOICE.

He also told the story of how he'd met with a group of young people troubled by sexuality, and how although only one of them was a person of faith, every single one of them knew about that bit in LEVITICUS – you know, where the Bible compares gay daddies to a prawn cocktail. Or something. Seriously, though, how is Bishop Roddenberry supposed to tell them that Mr God is the "god of love" when they all "know" that "He" is going round saying people are abominations?

"Religious people, Muslim, Jews, Christians, we are responsible for that," confessed the Bishop, "And it's going to take religious voices to undo the hatred that comes from those words."

And it was interesting to hear the way HE wanted the Church to bring people of diverse backgrounds TOGETHER, whether they are different genders or colours or sexualities, compared with the way the other side want to use it to keep people APART.

But it took Dame Ian to diagnose the problem:

"Just looking at it from the outside, the church thinks it's got a particular problem with some articles, perhaps not of faith but of, written in the Bible that they refer to. And I can remember the armed forces not that long ago saying they had a particular problem - it was all to do with discipline. Well it's just been discovered there is no discipline problems when you let gay people into the military. And schools too. Well we've got a particular problem.

"The particular problem they've all got and share is HOMOPHOBIA."

And he quoted Mr Thomas Jefferson who said "One might as well require a man to wear still this jacket which fitted him when a boy as for civilised society to suffer under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors".

"And you know," said Dame Ian, "we DO have barbarous ancestors, in politics, in religion, in the military, in every part of our lives."

Never mind Bishop Roddenberry, I think GANDALF should be head of the Church of England. He even has his own BEARD. (NB: NOT a Mrs Gandalf!)