Having just had a thorough look at the survey, I have problems with the questions it asks.
1. Should a commitment to celibacy in singleness and faithfulness in marriage be a requirement for those exercising leadership in the Uniting Church? How are they going to understand a 'no' answer to this? It may be that some people will answer no because they think that homosexual people living in faithful long term sexual relationships should be able to be ordained and this is not defined as a marriage. They may answer no because they are very uncomfortable with this as a simplistic formula for relationships. They may answer no because they have heterosexual people in their congregations who are exercising leadership despite the fact that they are living in a long term defacto relationship (this is often true of people who have gone through messy divorces and then found another partner). They may even answer no because they think there is nothing wrong with church leaders having sex with who ever they want whenever they want. The last is, of course, fairly unlikely, but the other three are very real options. And being committed to something doesn't necessarily mean that you put it into practice in your own life. I have a commitment to not losing my temper with my children, but I don't always manage. If a married minister is commited to faithfulness in marriage or a single minister is commited to celibacy as a standard but occasionally slip into a one night stand. does this matter? 2. Should people living in a same gender sexual relationship be ordained in the Uniting Church? If I answer 'yes', the inference is that I think that anyone who is living in a same gender sexual relationship should be ordained in the Uniting Church regardless of their particular gifts and abilities to exercise ordained ministry. If I answer 'undecided', the inference is that I have not yet made up my mind about whether or not people living in same gender sexual relationships should be ordained. And we have moved between questions from a notion of 'celibacy' to a notion of 'sexual relationship'. As the orientation guide for new students at Monash University used to explain every year, there are many ways of engaging in sexual activity than don't involve what is traditionally defined as sexual intercourse (the point in the Monash case being ways of avoiding pregnancy and STDs). At what stage of physical intimacy does one stop being celibate? Is this different to the stage at which two people would be seen as being in a sexual relationship? I would certainly say that it does. And this question doesn't address the question of whether or not ordained people can move into a same gender sexual relationship and remain ordained, a far more significant question for the UC at the moment, I would have thought. 3. Is the ordination of people living in a same gender sexual relationship an issue on which members of the Uniting Church should be directly consulted? Why are we being asked this question? If we are talking about the Uniting Church making a definitive statement about this one way or another, then, yes, I think we need to consult widely and carefully. If what is really being asked is "should Assembly have referred proposal 84 to presbyteries, congregations, Synods?" and the answer to this question is going to be used to 'prove' that Assembly was wrong, then my answer is different. Of course, it also has the same design fault as the first lot of questions asked by the Presbyterian church about union. The first time round, a vote for the whole Presbyteryian church to go into union needed to say yes I think the Uniting Church is a Good Thing and no, if there were a continuing Presbyterian church, I would not stay in it. We all had to vote again because they were concerned that so many people voted yes yes - the powers that be assumed that they hadn't read the questions carefully enough. In this one, the EMU/Alliance people would vote yes, no, yes. If too many people vote yes, yes, yes, the survey is certainly open to the criticism that people didn't read it carefully enough and thought they were agreeing with EMU/the Alliance. So I can't help wondering why they are concerned about being able to validate their results with the use of the distribution form when the questions are constructed in such a way that it will be very difficult for them to draw any meaningful valid conclusions anyway. They will be able to tell us that x% of those who returned the survey answered yes to question 1, y% answered no and z% were undecided and they will be able to give us a breakdown by gender, geographical location, membership status and ethnic background, but they will not be able to tell us what these people actually think about the issue. Not, of course, that it is likely to stop Gordon Moyes et al from trying. The Alliance has some very committed members - my envelope was hand addressed, so people have obviously gone through Synod directories and addressed hundreds of envelopes. It seems a pity that they didn't consult a social scientist about their question design before they went to all that trouble! Judy
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