Los Angeles backs same-sex blessings: CEN 12.12.08 p 7.

The Bishop of Los Angeles has authorized his clergy to perform same-sex marriages.

In his presidential address to the diocesan convention on Dec 5, Bishop J. Jon Bruno accepted the recommendations of a diocesan Task Force on Marriage Equality and announced that the diocese believes “the same blessing ceremony afforded to men and women should be afforded to same-sex couples.”

He added that cohabiting male-female couples who wish to receive the blessing of the church, but for tax avoidance purposes do not want to marry, would also be permitted to take advantage of the blessing liturgy.

The diocese also called upon the 2009 General Convention, which meets in July in Anaheim, California, to end the ban on gay bishops and blessings in the Episcopal Church.

The president of the pressure group Integrity, the Rev. Susan Russell said her group was “greatly encouraged that the Diocese of Los Angeles has taken such strong steps forward on the full inclusion of the LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, Transgendered] faithful in the Body of Christ.”

She further applauded the diocese’s decision to repudiate the ban on gay bishops and blessings enacted at the 2006 General Convention through resolution B033, saying that while Los Angeles, “Los Angeles cannot undo the damage done by BO33″ we stand “together to say that we refuse to be party to any further scapegoating of the gay and lesbian baptized.”

The new rites will not be obligatory, a diocesan spokesman told the Los Angeles Times, but conservative clergy in Los Angeles tell The Church of England Newspaper that they do not believe this policy will last.

One priest, who asked not to be named, said that the casting of the argument in support of gay marriage as a matter of human rights did not bode well for dissenters. Issues of natural justice, he observed, were not easily reducible to a compromise that permitted one group to accept and another to reject a human right.

The call to repudiate B033 by Los Angeles, if accepted by the 2009 General Convention, would place further political burdens upon Dr. Rowan Williams, church watchers note, and give added impetus to the calls of traditionalists for a third province in North America.