Thoughts on Calvin Robinson?

[meatbasedbreakfast]

Long time lurker, stepping out the darkness to ask this.

Was asked today by a friend who knows I'm GC what my thoughts are on Calvin Robinson. Apparently he's becoming a face of GC views?!

I was shocked. He is anti abortion (in all cases), doesn't think same sex marriage should be legal, and isn't a feminist in any sense of the word.

I'm genuinely concerned that our movement is being picked up by people like him, who couldn't care less about women. When he says biological sex is real, he couldn't give a damn about how that leads to discrimination/violence. It made my blood boil and I want to know what other people think.

I don't know, take it up with Ephesians. I did say I'm not religious myself.

To be fair to CR though, he did point out a few times that it worked both ways and that in his view husbands belong to their wives just as much as wives belong to their husbands. But if you want to pick that apart more, suggest you find a believer to talk to about it.

Or as a pp suggested, tweet Calvin himself.

This thread is very odd:

Calvin Robinson is your new leader!! - err...no he's not.

He's not even religious! - err... Google him for 5 mins if you like, and you'll see he's deeply religious.

Why does he wear a cassock?? - err...we don't know, does it matter?

I don't agree with his views on marriage!! - err... fine? Then don't listen to him.

His views are different from my catholic priest 50 years ago, explain that!! - err...we are neither a Catholic priest or Calvin Robinson so can't, and also we don't care.

All the demanding we are explain Calvin's views to you is odd. Watch him and engage with him if you like but stop demanding we explain things that are nothing to do with us to you.

Calvin is an unusually (in the current times) conservative and traditional Christian.

95% of the population wouldn't align with many of his views (that may be lower actually as strangely many Muslims would!).

The number of extremely traditional conservative Christians who are gender critical feminists is probably 0? Or there abouts, so it's odd to demand of feminists they explain his brand of traditional bible based Christianity to you.

The difference in approaches on this thread isn't between people who agree with Calvin and people who disagree, it's between people who believe he has a right to his views and that they don't automatically make him 'a prick' and those who decide to personally attack people who think differently.

Yes, thank you Malaga. Completely agree with your last two posts. CR is entitled to his beliefs and while I don't agree with them, I do see them as logically coherent in the context of Christianity and I do think CR himself has integrity, and would be willing to discuss and debate his ideas with others who were in good faith.

What more can we ask from people really?

The bible was written along time ago when society was very different,

This seems an odd complaint - the whole of the Bible is about how living God’s way is different from society’s expectations at that times. The whole thing is about going against the prevailing culture. You couldn’t be more counter-cultural at that time than by following Jesus. I am also not convinced that society changes that much over time.

I'm not sure why I'd take it up with the Ephesians, they didn't write the letter.

He didn't say it works both ways with submitting though. He's not my priest so I don't actually care about how he preaches the bible but for people to defend him and say he isn't a misogynist is odd to me as what he is preaching is misogynistic.

I think society changes a lot. I'm 70, I remember when a girl who got pregnant was a pariah, parents were ashamed, it was the thing parents seemed to dread most for their daughters. The pill came along, abortion was legalised, we got the swinging 60s. It was a world my parents and grandparents found quite shocking.

Here we are when who blinks an eye at a single woman getting pregnant, who thinks parents should pack their pregnant teenager off to a home, pretend they are visiting their gran and then have the baby adopted.

Haven't heard of any homosexuals getting locked up recently.

When my husband was a young policeman he remembers waiting at the hospital to arrest someone who had attempted suicide.

They can't sack you for being pregnant.

So yes I've seen society change massively in my 70 years.

Well, as I've said, I'm not religious. I'm also not Calvin Robinson. Why don't you take it up with him?

But sex outside marriage was hardly unknown in the Roman Empire around 0 AD/BC, and homosexuality was very much part of Roman and Greek culture of the day. Paul’s directions were to go against society/culture. I am not sure how saying ‘society has different views to Paul on this’ is different now to what it was then. If you don’t agree with Paul then you don’t agree, but it seems rather dishonest to say ‘we believe in the Bible but are going to make all these changes to make it fit in with how our current society thinks’. Perhaps that is why the CoE is losing members - it is trying too hard to change to fit society that it loses the point of its existence.

If you get into bed with a load of prats with horrible beliefs because they agree with your cause, then you have to lie in that bed. That includes him and all the Nazis etc who love your causes and we all see you. You can't pick and choose and saying you think you can doesn't convince anyone on the outside of your cult.

Yes, well said.

You can't pick and choose who agrees with you, correct. But that doesn't make them your responsibility.

If CR agrees with me about gender ideology, that doesn't make me responsible for him or answerable for any of his other beliefs.

If gender ideologists are agreed with by a bunch of paedophile and rapists, should we hold you to account for those people's actions?

No idea what nazis you're on about, though.

Heavens, did I get into bed with this chappie and I don’t remember?

my memory really isn’t what it was

But you are a member of a church that is opposed to contraception and abortion, and that views homosexual acts as a sin and opposes same sex marriage.

Your church also will not ordain women, partly because of what Paul said in I Corinthians:

34 women are to remain quiet in the assemblies, since they have no permission to speak: theirs is a subordinate part, as the Law itself says.

35 If there is anything they want to know, they should ask their husbands at home: it is shameful for a woman to speak in the assembly.

and in I Timothy:

9 Similarly, women are to wear suitable clothes and to be dressed quietly and modestly, without braided hair or gold and jewellery or expensive clothes;

10 their adornment is to do the good works that are proper for women who claim to be religious.

11 During instruction, a woman should be quiet and respectful.

12 I give no permission for a woman to teach or to have authority over a man. A woman ought to be quiet,

13 because Adam was formed first and Eve afterwards,

14 and it was not Adam who was led astray but the woman who was led astray and fell into sin.

15 Nevertheless, she will be saved by child-bearing, provided she lives a sensible life and is constant in faith and love and holiness.

I'm sure your priest is lovely and and your mum's priest was lovely (NAPALT? 😂) but how can you not see the hypocrisy here?

In that case TRAs are in bed with the Christian right, who also have burned Harry Potter books, and with the Nazis, who liked to burn books they disapproved of, too.

Or doesn't guilt by association work like that?

Crack on with your homework frazzledali it's school tomorrow.

Ooooooh!

excellent! I take it you’ve had a word with Mermaids and their association with propaedo academics, yeh?

How did it go?

Calvin isn't Roman Catholic, he is chatting to a man who trained to be a Catholic priest then decided not to go ahead, you may enjoy a visit to the old days OP and you can chat in the live stream and ask the man himself!

The most interesting thing about Calvin Robinson is the dispute he had with the Church of England and the case law it could possibly have created if he had pursued it.

CR was recommended for ordination training by a CoE Bishop's Advisor Panel and then successfully completed two years' study at Oxford. The CoE confidently state on their website:

Upon successful completion of your course, you will be ordained a deacon by your bishop, and will begin a curacy in a parish.

www.churchofengland.org/life-events/vocations/preparing-ordained-ministry

CR's expectations of being ordained and found a parish were completely normal but it didn't happen for him, despite successfully completing his studies. The church tried to pretend this is just how it is and not everyone gets a curacy and an ordination, despite what it says on their website.

CR submitted a subject access request and has all the receipts to show that he was denied ordination primarily because of his views on CRT. If he chose, he could have made a claim against the CoE of the same kind of magnitude as Forstater and Bailey's cases, just about a different ideology.

Case law is useful because it's about points of law rather than the facts of any particular case. For example, Maya Forstater's case relied on 'Grainger' to determine whether her gender critical beliefs were protected under the Equality Act.

'Grainger' was a case from 2010 about an employee's beliefs about climate change.

Grainger heavily cites Williamson (2005), which was a case about beliefs around corporal punishment in schools, and Campbell (1982) which is another corporal punishment case, brought by the opposite side. Also McClintock (2007), which was about beliefs around the placement of children for adoption by same sex couples, Arrowsmith (1981) which was about pacifist beliefs, and Eweida (2008) which was about the right to wear a crucifix at work.

And on it goes, back through the history of case law. It goes forwards as well, e.g. veganism is also a protected belief because of Grainger.

CR chose not to pursue his case against CoE and that's fair enough, good luck to him. But that's why he was ever relevant to feminists in the first place and so he's no longer relevant.

His belief that sex is real is so unremarkable that it feels stupid to even mention. Everyone knows sex is real.

Yet a woman had to spend several years going to court to prove that even a belief that sex is real and important is protected in law.

As if sex was not already a protected characteristic.

Thank you Maya xx

And thank you drive-by troll for starting this thread, it has really helped me clarify my thinking.

This would not have been straightforward as the Church of England is allowed to require its ordinands to hold particular beliefs. I guess he would have to show not only that he had a belief that was protected in the ordinary course, but also that that belief did not conflict with the core tenets of beliefs required by the Church of England.

Thank you Maya xx
**
Indeed - and best wishes for Maya in the hearings tomorrow and Tuesday.

The command to love in the bible is probably the most demanding thing that can be asked of anyone (when done properly). But the bible explicitly commands Christian's to love everyone - its the single most important part of the New Testament arguably. But of course, no-one actually does (not 100% of the time, not everyone). Not even in the past when most people took the bible very literally and were terrified of hell. So whereas the vows of the wife to obey are specific to her husband, and conservative Christians would expect them to be followed. The vow "to love" from the husband to wife is no-more than he should be doing to anyone he meets, and is a pledge that people break habitually anyway (and sometimes cant help it). It also relates to a feeling**, rather than an action which "obey/submit" is.

**I know, it could also be interpreted as active love. But its very open to interpretation,

It would have been very straightforward unless you can point to the core tenets of CoE doctrine that support CRT. Just the relative historical timeframes of these two ideologies should give you an immediate clue that this is a non-starter.

Time frame is irrelevant. And race is hardly absent from the Bible. It would be quite easy to enmesh elements of CRT with Anglican doctrine if you wanted to and I can see the courts would be reluctant to get involved in arguments around theology - which is what it is.