Rainbow bench in churchyard must be repainted

[Tentative2]

The bench was apparently painted in rainbow colours to show support for the NHS. Now a church court has ordered that it's repainted in its original brown colour to protect the “thoughts, feelings and emotions of all users of the churchyard”.
This has made me think of those colourful police cars and ambulances which people going through terrible experiences are being faced with.
www.msn.com/en-gb/entertainment/music/church-rainbow-nhs-bench-must-be-repainted-to-protect-feelings-court-rules/ar-AA11G2Gp?ocid

Good, if for no other reason than it looks hideous and not in keeping with a graveyard.

To be fair, colourful fading outdoor paint looks absolutely shit.

I fucking hated all that rainbow/flagellate yourself at the alter of the nhs shite.

Most of it just virtue signalling and passive-aggressiveness - ie. We've painted this in rainbow colours/stuck a huge rainbow flag here and if you object you are clearly anti nhs and/or homophobic. Yuck.

Good. Sounds like the repainted bench will be much more appropriate.

Hear hear! Even people on here have to get in 'I'm nhs' even if totally unrelated to the topic. Does my head in

Good.

I hate the fucking rainbow.

I associate it 100% with Stonewall now, which I realise isn't so here, but I saw it and just thought 'Stonewall'. And sadly Stonewall = anti women, therefore the rainbow = anti women.

If I sat there, I'd probably fart on it.

Yep it is sad how something so beautiful as a rainbow now means aggressive TRA stuff to be avoided.

If I sat there, I'd probably fart on it.

Thank you for this - I'm feeling miserable and it's made me 😂!

I love a rainbow but that bench looks awful.

😂😂

I am at a loss as to why anyone in a Church yard would be offended by a Rainbow. Christian’s have regarded the Rainbow as a message from God long before it was used as symbolism for the LGBTQ community or the NHS

I am similarly stumped.

From the article -
"In June 2021, its original dark brown was re-painted in rainbow colours by an unidentified group of people intending to show support for the NHS during the pandemic."

"However, according to the Consistory Court ruling, this decision was taken “without seeking consent from the priest-in-charge or the Parochial Church Council, let alone from this Court” and provoked division among the parish."

So "... re-painted in rainbow colours by an unidentified group ... without seeking consent from the priest-in-charge or the Parochial Church Council, let alone from this Court”. That sounds to me as if someone decided that they knew better than everyone else and chose to impose their idea of how this bench (which was not theirs) should look on everyone else. Because they knew better.

Are they really 'unidentified'? It would have taken hours to do. Could it really have been done without anyone seeing who did it.

Thank goodness, not least because the garish colours are out of keeping with the beautiful natural settings of churchyards.

I have come to hate rainbows.

I also hate that they are simultaneously being used for a lot of children’s clothes.

I don't know why this needed to go to a church court. Presumably either the vicar/priest or the church council could have decided to get the bench re-painted and then done it. If the rainbow-painting was done by an unauthorised person or people then that's illegal vandalism, surely?
As for why people object to a rainbow bench? For one thing, it's in a churchyard. People go to a churchyard to bury their dead and then to spend time remembering their dead family members at the graveside. They are likely to be very sad. A rainbow is very in-your-face happy and cheerful in a nursery school kind of way (but see below).
For another thing, for all or most people the rainbow now symbolises the politics of the Covid pandemic and/or Stonewall. That's not what people need to have thrown in their face in a churchyard.

I was deputy registrar for a C of E diocese once and there are very strict rules about what is allowed in a church yard. It’s nothing to do with the rainbow as a symbol.

I’m sure the bench looked a bit shit and it was a breach of church etiquette (the drama of what you can and cannot leave graveside locally is hotly debated on our community Facebook group) but I am pleased to report I’m starting to enjoy the rainbow flag again.

my area’s pride happened very recently and I couldn’t help but feel that every classic 🏳️‍🌈 was a deliberate push back against the new ‘Progress Pride’ version.

(no doubt the old version will get banned from sale if anyone powerful notices this quiet rebellion!)

I do hope that one day I'll be able to view the rainbow without gritting my teeth, but sadly that day is not yet.

But I am glad I made some of you laugh.

Because it looks tacky and shit

The natural rainbow is a thing of stunning beauty, a bench painted in various colours is tacky and garish. What on earth does the health service and/or Pride have to do with a lovely peaceful churchyard anyway? There’s always an undercurrent of aggression with this type of thing, ‘don’t you worship the NHS/ are you transphobic?’ Glad they said no.

Here's a photo of the bench from the article in the OP, and a screenshot from Google streetview of the church. The bench is placed such that everyone entering the church walks past it, and it frankly looks out of place.

I like the colours, but the previous poster is right, it will look shit by spring, and it isn't in the right place and it is political now. Plus they are really strict about what can go in a churchyard.

Sounds good. Can the re-painters get round to the police cars and pedestrian crossings next please?

I like the bench, just not in a place people come to for peaceful contemplation. It would be lovely in a playground.

Used to be a church warden, so it sounds as if the church court was because the priest and PCC were accused of painting the bench without going through the very strict procedures. Their defence was simply that they hadn’t done it; the court thing was probably because they needed to haul out all the PCC minutes, bring witnesses that the priest was surprised to find a rainbow bench, etc.

It’s to stop over-enthusiastic modernising priests and PCCs wrecking beautiful old buildings/church yards without any oversight.