In response to Fandango’s Who Won the Week posts, I have been looking at my own newsfeeds.

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When I first saw this story, I thought it might be a nice “feel good” story to share. The link is https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-59269916 and the title is:

Gay couple receive landmark Church in Wales blessing

and I was about to comment about how refreshing it is that a church (the Church of Wales is the main protestant church of Wales) is finally moving with the times.

But then I realised that actually the story has the opposite spin.

Because that word “blessing” in the headline is key. In fact, they even used the wrong case. Shame on you, BBC! A “Blessing” is a formal type of ceremony. It’s not a wedding, because this church does not permit same-sex weddings. Neither does the largest protestant church in the UK, the Church of England.

Much as these guys might love each other every bit as much as a hetero couple, much as their god might acknowledge their love as every bit as deep as a hetero couple’s, the best you’ll get from the Church of Wales is a Blessing. And even that is sold as “progress” (there is only a story at all because this one was the first). In 2021, ffs.

One of my oldest friends has never found marriage, and she’s a couple years older than me. Will it happen now? Doubtful, in her late fifties. Ditto one of my relatives. And they are both brilliant people, it just never happened for them.

You’d think something like a church would just be happy for people, especially members of its own flock. Love is hard enough to find in this life.

Getting UK-specific now, we had a state for a few years where there was a legal construct, a “Civil Partnership” between a couple, but not a traditional, more straightforward concept of just “marriage”, a concept which has been recognised since forever.

It didn’t work. The desire was for absolute equality.

This “Blessing” nonsense sounds rather like a Civil Partnership. I’d have told them to shove it where the sun don’t shine.