Archbishop Rowan Williams, the spiritual head of the Anglican Communion, had this to say on the topic of homosexuality and contraception:
In a church that accepts the legitimacy of contraception, the absolute condemnation of same-sex relations of intimacy must rely either on an abstract fundamentalist deployment of a number of very ambiguous biblical texts, or on a problematic and nonscriptural theory about natural complementarity, applied narrowly and crudely to physical differentiation without regard to psychological structures.
I’m not convinced he’s right, but it’s a fascinating thesis. Was the decision of the Anglican Church to permit birth control the trigger that sex off homosexual ordinations decades later? And if so, is there anything that other Protestant churches can do to prevent going down the same path?
I for one do not agree, but I know of an Anglo-Catholic priest – a woman actually – whose perspective is 180 degrees opposite that of Williams, but who argues for precisely this point. (NB: mentioning this priest’s sex in passing is not an invitation to anyone to discuss/debate women’s ordination at this time or in this forum.)
As to Williams’ statement quoted above, I would stand it on its head. He is privileging “psychological structures” without regard to “physical differentiation”: a rather gnostic move, it seems to me.