@SchoolChaplain
I've name changed for this post as there can't be that many of us in the UK so it's a bit outing and I don't want it linked to my other posts.
I'm a school chaplain. We have been warned by church leaders to be very careful what we say on the back of this case.
For what it's worth, I am 100% for same sex marriage (and wish the CofE would change their standpoint on this but they won't anytime soon) but have to be incredibly careful what I say on gender identity.
I think I could be more open on my views on gender idealogy if I were in parish, but the schools (including church schools) have all been stonewalled.
It seems so strange that my views on same sex marriage are too liberal for the CofE to officially accept, but I'm deemed unacceptably conservative and bigoted for believing that there is a difference between sex and gender and that sex is fixed.
Interestingly depressing and somehow totally unsurprising - of course the Cof E would go in for woke homophobia.
Our local parish has a transwoman curate. I’ve stopped going and probably won’t go back again now. I grew up going to very high church C of E girls’ schools and getting lectured by male chaplains preaching to school halls of girls; we even had one who gave sermons about how he opposed female ordination and as for lesbianism....beyond the pale! Turning up for a service at the local parish to find a middle aged transwoman sermonising took me right back to those days. No female C of E vicar or chaplain I’ve ever heard has quite that kind of tone. It’s difficult to abandon decades of male privilege and male style in public speaking, I guess. As a bi woman who’s very aware of how women still struggle in the church (maternity leave anyone?) and how homophobic it still is, it sticks in the craw a bit that suddenly they’re all for the kind of woman who isn’t really a woman.