David Hilliard. Journal of Homosexuality. Volume 33, Issue 2. 1997.
In Sydney, more than anywhere else in Australia, the Anglican Church has been strongly and publicly opposed to the gay movement in all of its expressions. Within Australia, no major religious body has so often discussed the subject of homosexuality in its annual synod, passed so many resolutions on this subject, and campaigned so strongly against the decriminalization of male homosexual behavior. (Almost all the debate has centered on male homosexuality; lesbians have been largely ignored.) From the standpoint of the gay movement and its historians, the Anglican diocese of Sydney has become synonymous with theological fundamentalism and ecclesiastical intransigence. Among Sydney’s visible gay community–which is now larger than the number of churchgoing Anglicans–few bodies are so disliked. The reactions from each side have now become quite predictable. It was no surprise in March 1994 when the Archbishop of Sydney and three of his assistant bishops came out in strong opposition to the first telecast by the Australian Broadcasting Commission of the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade; indeed, in the light of recent history, it would have been odd if they had not.
The object of this paper is to explore the reasons for and the roots of this opposition, and the extent to which it bears the imprint of a religious outlook distinctive of Sydney. For in many ways Sydney is not a typical Anglican diocese, and over the years it has acquired a reputation around the world as a stronghold of conservative evangelicalism–often maddening to its opponents but inspiring to its admirers, a light on the hill, a rock-like guardian of evangelical orthodoxy.
First, let us look at the Sydney Anglican style and outlook. The Anglican Church (or Church of England as it was officially called until 1981) has until recently been the largest religious denomination in the largest city in Australia. Until the 1960s, with the nominal allegiance of some 40 per cent of the population, the Anglican Church was an integral part of Sydney’s physical and social landscape. It embraced people of every class, suburb, and occupation, but its churchgoing strength lay in the middle- and upper-class districts of the city, and it was closely linked with the city’s business leadership and the conservative political parties. Since the foundation of New South Wales as a convict colony in 1788 the Anglican Church in Sydney tended to think and act as if it were the established church, with the right to call upon the government to support its position by law. It was a strongly Protestant and evangelical church, very confident of the rightness of its position, rather pugnacious, and not reluctant to rebuke error. Its leaders were passionately opposed to the Church of Rome (the second largest religious body in the city) and also to the Anglo-Catholic movement within the Church of England. In the 1880s Sydney evangelicals began forming specifically party organizations to coordinate and articulate their cause. In 1909 they founded the Anglican Church League (ACL) to ensure their continued dominance in every area of church life and to preserve the evangelical character of Sydney against Anglo-Catholic influences which were spreading elsewhere in Australian Anglicanism. The ACL was led by senior clergy, in alliance with a formidable group of lay lawyers. During the early twentieth century the atmosphere of the diocese became increasingly isolationist and defensive–Sydney versus the rest, ‘‘fortress Sydney.’’ The leaders of the diocese, preoccupied with preserving their evangelical heritage, were deeply hostile to both liberalism and Anglo-Catholicism. Religious debate among Sydney Anglicans was often harsh and uncompromising, absolute positions were tenaciously defended, and there was much suspicion of ‘‘liberal’’ evangelicals who took a different position from the dominant group.
Religious movements when they are large are rarely homogeneous; nor was Sydney evangelicalism an exception. In the late nineteenth century there appeared a new stream, which has had considerable influence on the outlook of an influential section of Sydney Anglicans ever since. This was a view of the church as a faithful community of true believers and forgiven sinners, separated from ‘‘the world’’ as far as possible and searching for a life of personal holiness. This sectarian concept of the church as a gathered community in a world in which the majority were either hostile or apathetic to the evangelical message caught the imagination of a generation of students who in the 1890s studied at Moore Theological College, which trained clergy for the diocese of Sydney. These ideas came into prominence again in the 1950s and since then have become well-entrenched among the younger clergy in Sydney.
The teaching given at Moore College shaped the thinking of generations of Sydney’s Anglican clergymen. It was a theology deeply grounded in the Reformed (or Calvinist) tradition which emphasized the intellectual content of Christianity rather than the emotional, the liturgical, or the pastoral. Students were introduced to theological argument and counterargument to an extent that was unusual in Australian Anglican theological colleges. In each generation Moore College was largely moulded by its principal. In our period the central figure was the Rev. Dr. David Broughton Knox, principal from 1959 to 1985. (He died in January 1994.) Knox was himself a product of the Sydney evangelical subculture, son of a prominent clergyman, and brother-in-law of Archbishop Marcus Loane (Archbishop of Sydney 1966-82). As well as a theologian, Knox was an astute ecclesiastical politician, a prominent member of the ACL, and his views on almost everything were taken very seriously by the Sydney clergy who had been taught by him. He played a central role in developing, expounding, and defending the official policy of the Anglican Church in Sydney on homosexuality.
At the center of the theology taught at Moore College was, and is, the belief that the Bible is the supreme and ultimate authority in matters of faith. In its biblical scholarship the college is conservative, but not fundamentalist. Sydney Anglican evangelicals have a very high view of the Bible as the written Word of God. In popular thinking it is seen as the complete expression of God’s will and character, the Maker’s instructions, the fixed deposit of Truth. There is therefore little room for debate, and no grey areas, on those issues on which it is believed that God has spoken plainly through the Bible. Whenever theological differences emerged among Sydney Anglicans they invariably became linked to the question of the inspiration and authority of the Bible.
In the postwar years the Anglican Church, like the other major Protestant churches in Sydney, saw its role as that of moral guardian of society. It had a duty to give a lead and to ensure that the laws of the state should generally reflect God’s standards as laid down for all people in the Bible and embodied in the traditional moral teachings of the church. Throughout the 1950s the Protestant churches in the state of New South Wales fought a rearguard action to preserve the ground they had gained in previous decades. There were big fights over the six o’clock closing of hotel bars; the holding of commercial sporting events and the opening of cinemas on Sundays; poker machines; off-the-course betting; and what were described as obscene publications. On each issue the Protestant churches lost the battle to control the life of the wider society. In the 1970s the state laws relating to male homosexuality assumed great symbolic importance. They became the issue on which evangelicals in particular were keen to achieve a public victory, to demonstrate that New South Wales was still a recognizably Christian society.
We have only a fragmentary knowledge of homosexuality among Sydney Anglicans before the 1960s. It is certain that small groups of gay men were drawn to Anglo-Catholic churches such as St James’, King Street, and Christ Church St Laurence, at least from the 1890s, and there they formed small and discreet social networks. Father John Hope, rector of Christ Church St Laurence from 1926 to 1964, had to deal with many young men who were regarded as ‘‘unmanly.’’ When asked by a disapproving bishop whether ‘‘certain types’’ attended his church he growled back: ‘‘And is it not a good thing that these people so dear to Our Lord have somewhere they can go?’’
This observable association of homosexually inclined men with churches at the high end of the Anglican spectrum was one of the reasons for evangelical dislike of Anglo-Catholicism. Nothing was said explicitly in print, but it was hinted at. Protestant worship was described as ‘‘manly,’’ which implied that there were styles of worship that were unmanly.
However, even in solidly evangelical Sydney suburban parishes gay men and women sometimes met through church organizations. There was a significant gay presence among church organists and choirmasters. Homosexual or (married) bisexual evangelical clergymen were not unknown. The presence of lesbians in the evangelical subculture is even more hard to unravel. There were and are many examples of romantic friendships and long-term relationships between women in evangelical circles, though those involved would have been horrified at any suggestion that they were lesbians.
During the 1960s Australian church newspapers and periodicals began to discuss the ‘‘problem’’ of homosexuality, often prompted by news reports of moves in Great Britain to reform the laws relating to male homosexual behavior. In 1967 the Church Life and Work Committee of the Presbyterian Church in New South Wales held a public seminar on homosexuality and published the papers. In 1969 the Sydney diocesan synod set up a Moral and Social Questions Committee to consider issues that were then beginning to occupy public attention: abortion, homosexuality, and marriage. The Committee presented a conservative report on abortion in 1971, then moved on to homosexuality.
In the meantime homosexuals had begun to ‘‘come out’’ of the closet. Following the emergence of gay groups committed to social change in North America and Britain, the Campaign Against Moral Persecution (CAMP Inc.) was formed in Sydney in July 1970 and four months later began its own magazine CAMP INK. It soon became a national organization, and for the first time in Australia homosexuals began to have their say in public about who they were and what they wanted. The members of CAMP sought to educate their friends, relatives, and co-workers about homosexuality, and they challenged the prevailing view that homosexuality was sick, sinful, and criminal. In 1971 some Christians from various denominations who were members of CAMP decided to form a church group called Cross+Section, to support Christian homosexuals within their own congregations. Later that year Cross+Section sent a one-page statement of its views on homosexuality and Christianity with a covering letter to Sydney clergy of the major denominations, inviting a response. Although very few Anglican clergymen replied there is some oral evidence that in this period, before the official line was laid down and views became polarized, there was more openness on the question than later became the case.
The formation of CAMP was only one of many signs of social change and a more liberal atmosphere in Australia in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Censorship was relaxed and books and films that had quite recently been banned became freely available. Mainstream magazines and newspapers ran their first sympathetic articles on homosexuality. Mart Cowley’s play The Boys in the Band opened in Sydney in October 1968, only six months after it began in New York and the first production outside the United States, and ran for many months. In 1972 there was a huge uproar over The Little Red School-Book. Almost every established institution and received tradition was publicly criticized. Many younger people found the new atmosphere liberating, but in evangelical circles (and among conservative Christians generally) there was a feeling that the moral foundations of society were being undermined. It was at this time that the expression ‘‘permissive society’’ came into use as a term of abuse. Among evangelicals, too, changes were occurring. The old strictures against young women wearing makeup, the drinking of alcohol, dancing, and secular pleasures on Sunday were quietly dropped. Evangelical families began to experience the pain of divorce, which hitherto they had seen as something that happened only to non-Christians.
This unease about what was seen as a breakdown in moral standards led to a movement of counterattack. The Australian Festival of Light was founded in 1973, with strong support from Sydney Anglican leaders. It was against this polarized background that the Sydney diocesan committee did its study of homosexuality. The atmosphere encouraged an emphasis on resistance and commitment to traditional moral absolutes rather than accommodation.
It was a television program on homosexuality–one of a new wave of documentaries on controversial subjects–that triggered the first public confrontation between the Anglican Church in Sydney and the emerging gay movement. On 31 October 1972 the Australian Broadcasting Commission television series Chequerboard did its first program on homosexual relationships, which comprised interviews with a lesbian couple and a male couple. One of the latter, Peter Bonsall-Boone, was one of the founders of Cross+Section. Since 1968 he had worked as parish secretary at St Clement’s, Mosman, a prestigious parish in an upper-class suburb on Sydney’s North Shore.
The rector of St Clement’s in 1972 was the Rev. Ray Weir, a respected and experienced clergyman who had been a member of a New South Wales government committee investigating homosexuality ten years earlier. In 1972 he had given a paper on the subject at a Sydney Clergy School, which was based on the material he had collected in the late 1950s and early 1960s. His summary included:
Homosexuals drawn from all walks and professions–many are charming, friendly people. Numbers in theatrical and artistic circles–stewards–because more tolerant attitude is taken there to homosexuals. Often drawn to churches where music and colour and ritual are predominant–I’ve met number who started off their homosexual life through contacts at such churches. [An interesting piece of evidence of the role of Anglo-Catholicism in Sydney’s gay subculture of this period and a reason why evangelical clergymen knew so little about the subject.] In appearance, dress and manner the homosexual is not easily identified as such–(certain mannerisms and dress with passive homosexuals–scent and make-up and nail polish) but they are fairly easily recognised among themselves. Use of certain phrases and terms and gestures.
The forty-five-minute Chequerboard program, called ‘‘This just happens to be a part of me,’’ aroused enormous interest. This was not only because it was the first time in Australia that homosexuals had spoken for themselves on a major television program, but because of the people interviewed. They were articulate and they spoke honestly and naturally about their lives and their social and political situations in urban Australia. They did not believe that they were either sick or sinful, nor were they obviously unhappy. Because of this they were accused by conservatives of being advocates and apologists for a homosexual way of life. ‘‘The Church exists to aid those who seek help with their problems, but we cannot help those who say ‘I have no problem,’’’ said a spokesman for the Anglican diocese. The newly formed Sydney Gay Liberation was critical for quite another reason: those interviewed came across as typical suburban middle-class couples. But as Bonsall-Boone cheerfully remarked: ‘‘That’s what we are!’’ During the interview it emerged that Bonsall-Boone was a church secretary, but it was not mentioned where.
Then the storm broke. Within a few days the Archbishop of Sydney and each of his assistant bishops were on the phone to the rector of St Clement’s demanding action. So were dozens of clergy and lay people. On the Sunday after the television program the rector’s warden asked Bonsall-Boone to resign because by publicly acknowledging his homosexuality he had ‘‘involved the Church in controversy.’’ When he notified the parish that he had decided not to go, he was dismissed. This was probably the first clear case in Australia of a person being dismissed from a job explicitly because of homosexuality.
The sacking of Bonsall-Boone encapsulated all the issues that the gay movement was on about. It showed why homosexuals were forced to live secret lives and to pretend that they were heterosexual. Outside a small range of occupations there was often a heavy price to be paid if one’s homosexuality became known, especially in anything connected with the church. On Sunday 12 November 1972 several hundred members of CAMP and other supporters held a demonstration of protest outside St Clement’s during the main Sunday morning service, accompanied by newspaper reporters and television cameras.
The opinion leaders of the diocese of Sydney clearly felt that there might be some confusion among Anglican lay people about the subject of homosexuality. The result was a broadcast talk on homosexuality by Broughton Knox, principal of Moore Theological College, early in 1973 on Station 2CH. This was subsequently published in the diocesan monthly paper Southern Cross. It was a declaration of war on the gay movement, an uncompromising statement against those who were arguing on television and in the press that the practice of homosexuality was compatible with being a Christian. ‘‘The Old Testament is absolutely clear,’’ said Knox, ‘‘that God abominates homosexual acts’’ and this teaching was affirmed in the New Testament. God had also written this condemnation of homosexuality into ‘‘our natural instincts.’’ This was because God had made sex for relationship, whereas homosexuality uses sex in a self-centered way for self-satisfaction, contrary to God’s purpose.
There were three main points in Knox’s paper that were to remain in all official statements on the subject by the Anglican Church in Sydney: (1) Homosexual behavior is clearly condemned by the plain Word of God because it undermines God’s purpose for sex. (2) Homosexuals who obey God’s law should receive sympathy from the church, but those who are disobedient and persist in their sin should have no place in a Christian congregation. (3) Homosexuals should seek to overcome their weakness, but if this is not possible, they should not express their feelings. The first and third points were paralleled in other church reports and other publications of the time; they embodied a position from which few evangelicals in Australia (or North America) would have openly dissented.20 The second point reflected Knox’s theology of the gathered church: the ideal of a pure congregation from which persistent and public sinners should be excluded. In this understanding of the church, for a congregation seeking after holiness to admit known ‘‘practicing’’ homosexuals was comparable to having Christian fellowship with an adulterous couple. Knox himself never modified his views on the subject. Sixteen years later, in a book of essays on ‘‘God’s word on present issues,’’ his treatment of homosexuality was equally severe: ‘‘Homosexual behaviour cannot be condoned without destroying the basis of sexual morality in toto.’’
Knox’s article evoked some spirited rejoinders, including an article by the Rev. Tony Bagnall, a suburban rector who represented a liberal Catholic standpoint, a beleaguered minority within the diocese of Sydney:
Canon Knox seems to make no allowance for this basic fact of our existence, that the world has changed, and that our understanding of it, and of men and women, has also changed. In the particular problem of homosexuality, new knowledge in the social sciences has brought a completely new understanding of this age-old problem … Homosexual persons, like heterosexual persons with their particular problems, need help and understanding, which the Church should be the first to give.
This was only the first round of the debate. Within a few months the issue arose again in a different context: the case of Jeremy Fisher. He was a student at Robert Menzies College, a newly opened residential college at Macquarie University, operated under evangelical Anglican auspices. When the Master of the college, the Rev. Dr. Alan Cole, discovered Fisher’s connection with Macquarie University Gay Liberation he imposed conditions on his return to the college the following semester: he was to lead a chaste life and seek psychological and spiritual help to overcome his homosexual problem. It was Cole’s view that an active homosexual was not compatible with a Christian community. Fisher refused to accept these conditions and in any case had no desire to return to the college. In June 1973 he was interviewed on a television current affairs program This Day Tonight. Once again the Anglican Church in Sydney was in the public eye as an oppressor of an otherwise inoffensive homosexual. The issue also illustrated the confrontation between the old-style paternalism of most church-related university residential colleges and the demands of the new generation of students for moral autonomy.
The Fisher case was taken up by those within Macquarie University who saw it as a case of an institution affiliated with the university and largely funded with public money attempting to impose particular religious beliefs–Cole’s view that homosexuality was contrary to God’s law–on the private life of a student. The Macquarie University Students’ Council, the Staff Association, and the Builders Labourers’ Federation (which imposed a ban on further building work at the college) took up Fisher’s cause and opposed Cole’s action. However, in September 1973 the committee appointed by the Macquarie University Council to report on whether the exclusion of Fisher had amounted to a religious test in breach of the university bylaws concluded that it did not. So the issue died.
In the same month the Sydney diocesan Ethics and Social Questions Committee released its long-awaited Report on Homosexuality. Among the members of the committee was Broughton Knox. Its chairman was his friend and colleague, the Rev. Bruce Smith, who taught Systematic Theology at Moore College. Smith wrote the substance of the report; other members of the committee read and commented on various drafts and supported the main contentions, though at least two of them later had second thoughts. The report said much the same as Knox’s article, though in more detail and supported by substantial appendices on biblical texts, the ‘‘aetiology’’ of homosexuality, and Australian state legislation relating to homosexual offences. It showed little understanding of the life experience of homosexuals, its practical prescriptions being confined to advice to ‘‘abide by God’s word,’’ maintain self-control over their propensities, and to seek professional help in order to change their sexual orientation. (At this time aversion therapy was a favorite method.) Homosexual feelings, behavior, and relationships were described only in negative terms (a ‘‘propensity,’’ a ‘‘weakness’’); the word ‘‘love’’ was not mentioned. The report argued that the homosexual way of life, by defying the polarities of sex, willfully contradicted the God-ordained heterosexual pattern ‘‘at its most fundamental level’’ and threatened the social institution of marriage more seriously than did adultery. It quoted some rhetoric from Dennis Altman and other writers from the gay movement who talked about restructuring society in order to argue that the ‘‘homosexual revolt’’ was a real threat to the existing understanding of family and gender differences. For this reason, therefore, to reflect the community’s disapproval of overt homosexuality and to protect the public good, the report recommended that the current laws in New South Wales against male homosexual behavior should be maintained. Homosexual behavior was both sinful and socially subversive and should be punished. (The New South Wales criminal law imposed terms of imprisonment of up to fourteen years for homosexual offences.) In this area the Sydney report diverged from other Australian church reports of the period, all of which had recommended changing the law. It also represented a harder position than Smith himself had held several years earlier, when he had conceded the strength of the case for decriminalization.
The problem, as the committee admitted, was that police activity could be unjust, prison ‘‘may exacerbate the problem of homosexuality,’’ and state laws were inconsistent. It made a number of recommendations in these areas. State laws should be made more uniform; first offenders should appear before a ‘‘properly constituted tribunal’’; police should cease the practice of entrapment; homosexual offenders ‘‘should be directed to receive qualified psychological help, provided that such help has the cooperation of the person directed to receive it,’’ and so on. Dennis Altman, in reviewing the report, correctly identified the committee’s dilemma. It ‘‘wants to outlaw homosexuality and yet it admits that there is no effective way of doing so.’’ But why outlaw homosexuality anyway? ‘‘Like most of our better poofter bashers the Diocesan committee seems to believe homosexuality both an unspeakable form of behavior and one that would attract thousands of converts were we not eternally vigilant.’’ It was a valid point.
In its opposition to the removal of legal penalties, the Sydney committee earned itself a minor place in history. In the mid-1960s the major Australian churches began to consider the ‘‘problem’’ of homosexuality. Reflecting a general shift in public opinion–but also helping to change it–special committees and representative assemblies had recommended the legalization of homosexual behavior between consenting adults in private. These were the same recommendations as the 1957 Wolfenden Report in Britain. Among them were the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in New South Wales (1967) and of Victoria (1974), the General Conference of the Methodist Church (1972), and the synod of the Anglican diocese of Melbourne (1972). In the British parliament in 1967 the Archbishop of Canterbury had strongly advocated homosexual law reform and was bitterly attacked by moral conservatives for doing so. The support given to law reform by churches and religious leaders at the Catholic and liberal wings of Christianity did not carry much weight with Sydney Anglican leaders, for they saw this as a concession to the permissive spirit of the age. On the contrary, they argued that obedience to the plain teaching of the Bible demanded that legal sanctions should be retained, for otherwise homosexuality would be given ‘‘the status of an accepted form of sexual activity,’’ which in the mind of God it was not.
The printed report on homosexuality was presented to the Sydney diocesan synod in October 1973 and debated on the floor. The synod was an all-male assembly; women were first elected as parish representatives in 1974. Peter Bonsall-Boone, as a representative of St John’s, Balmain, spoke in opposition. The one known liberal member of the committee, by this time so dissatisfied with the way the committee had done its work and the last-minute rush to get the report finished, had finally resigned. The synod received, though did not formally adopt, the report and recommended that it be distributed to influential members of the community and for sale to the public. The committee was more conservative than the synod. A significant minority of clergy and lay people was uneasy about the arguments used to justify the opposition to homosexual law reform especially when no one was seriously advocating that adultery, for example, should likewise be subject to the criminal law.
The church group of CAMP, Cross+Section, prepared a response, Homosexuals Report Back, published in April 1974. Bruce Smith, who reviewed it in a church paper, was unimpressed and repeated his warning that ‘‘Abolition of all forms of discrimination against homosexuality involves nothing less than a social revolution.’’
Meanwhile, from the early 1970s Sydney’s gay subculture became much more visible. There was a proliferation of new clubs and bars, the first steam baths, the first commercial gay newspapers, and a growing number of shops that stocked gay books and magazines. The ‘‘Golden Mile’’ of Oxford Street became the center of a ‘‘gay ghetto’’ that embraced the adjacent inner suburbs of Darlinghurst, Paddington, and Surry Hills and attracted gay men from around Australia. People began to speak of the ‘‘gay community.’’ Sydney’s first Gay Mardi Gras was held in 1978. The historian of Sydney’s gay subculture has summed up the developments of this period:
Thus there had been an incredible concentration of activity within a relatively short space of time, in a discrete geographic area, yet all occurring in a city where male homosexual activity was illegal. All this helped create a sense of gay identity: there was now a definite area where the new ‘‘gay’’ man could feel at home, in territory that was clearly stamped in his image.
Sydney evangelicals looked upon these social trends with dismay. They saw themselves in the front line of an ideological and spiritual battle. By the end of the 1970s the lines of division were sharply drawn. On the one side was the Sydney evangelical leadership, in alliance with the Festival of Light, fearful of the upsurge of humanism, moral ‘‘permissiveness,’’ and spiritual ruin. On the other were a variety of liberation movements, which for various reasons saw the Anglican Church as a chief agent of oppression. The situation had parallels with the sectarian division between Protestants and Catholics which had run right through New South Wales life until the 1960s. Each saw the other as an aggressive monolith seeking to impose its will on society, and the behavior of each side reinforced the stereotypes held by the other. The language used in evangelical literature is revealing. Homosexual activists were invariably described as ‘‘noisy,’’ ‘‘blatant,’’ and ‘‘strident,’’ whereas keen evangelicals doing the same thing were ‘‘witnessing.’’ As Sydney’s gay community became politically active, especially in the long campaign for law reform, so the evangelical conservatives felt it necessary to take an even stronger stand in opposition. The two worlds hardly ever interacted: that is, those who were active in Women’s Liberation or one of Sydney’s growing number of gay organizations lived their lives totally outside the evangelical subculture, and vice versa. The separation was geographical as well as ideological. Homosexuals were to be found in every part of Sydney, but the emerging ‘‘gay ghetto’’ of the inner eastern suburbs and those areas in the inner west with a high proportion of lesbians were worlds apart from the evangelical Anglican strongholds in the upper-class suburbs of the North Shore and in the postwar middleclass suburbs on the outer ring of the metropolitan area. Between the warring tribes there appeared to be no middle ground.
Whereas most church bodies that examined the subject of homosexuality in this period issued a report or passed a motion and left it at that, the diocese of Sydney regularly reinforced its position over the next few years, with further synod resolutions opposing reports of the federal government’s Royal Commission on Human Relationships (1977) and the New South Wales Anti-Discrimination Board (1978) which had recommended giving homosexuals equality before the law. At the 1977 diocesan synod Broughton Knox, in a clever move to link support for homosexual law reform with unsound views of the Bible, and to bring wayward evangelicals into line, successfully moved: ‘‘This Synod is of the opinion that the present laws in New South Wales against homosexual acts are not unjust inasmuch as they reflect the Creator’s prohibition of homosexual acts which is so strongly expressed in His Holy Word.’’
Broughton Knox, who had very firm views on what he saw as the Bible’s clear teaching on the roles of women and men, was at the same time embarking on a campaign that was to run for the rest of his working life. Among Australian Anglicans he led the conservative evangelical theological opposition to moves for the ordination of women, on the ground that in the Christian congregation, as in the family, God had laid down a definite pattern of relationship of man to woman, in which the headship and primacy belonged to the male. This relationship could not change because it was part of the created order and testified to throughout Scripture. Over the next fifteen years the homosexual debate gradually became intertwined with the debate on the ordination of women. Led by Knox, those who were most strongly opposed to homosexuality were usually against the ordination of women; those who for various reasons were unhappy with the diocese’s official policy on homosexuality, or who were prepared to enter into dialogue with gay Christians, were more likely to be supporters of women’s ordination or open to the possibility of change. After the ordination of women, Sydney’s conservatives argued, the next item on the ‘‘liberal agenda’’ was the acceptance of homosexuality and the ordination of openly gay clergy. On both issues they were proud to stand against the tide. Significantly, by 1996 Sydney is the only major urban Anglican diocese in Australia (or the Western world) which has not ordained women priests, and has no likelihood in the near future of doing so.
Yet on the subject of law reform there were signs of a slight softening of attitude. In 1981 a survey by the Southern Cross of twenty Sydney Anglican clergymen at random showed that more than half were sympathetic to decriminalization of homosexual acts between consenting adults. At the upper level, however, the diocese was locked into a position of opposition, which it justified as commanded by the Word of God. It had become impossible to modify its position without losing face or appearing to send a message that it was no longer so definite about the immorality of homosexual behavior.
During the mid-1970s the original church group of CAMP had dissolved, to be supplanted in 1974 by the Metropolitan Community Church and the Catholic gay organization Acceptance. In 1979 AngGays was founded, with the object ‘‘to unite Anglican homosexuals and to be an instrument through which the Anglican homosexual may be heard by the Church and society.’’ The AngGays collective was always a small group, most of the work being done by six or eight activists (most of them males; only one very ‘‘out’’ lesbian). Most of its members came from the High Church end of Anglicanism, though not from the Anglo-Catholic center of Christ Church St Laurence. This meant that they had no contacts with the thriving youth network of Sydney’s evangelical parishes. They met fortnightly at the homes of members, began publishing an occasional Bulletin, and embarked on a vigorous campaign to get their views across. During the next few years AngGays became the despair of diocesan leaders. Its members kept up a stream of letters to the church and secular press, challenging the claims of evangelical opponents of homosexuality, and distributed literature to clergy and others. They joined in demonstrations, marches and religious services wearing T-shirts with the slogan ‘‘Gay and Christian,’’ and they wrote numerous letters of protest. For the annual Mardi Gras parade they built floats whose symbols and slogans were seen as either hilarious or outrageous. In 1984, for example, they made a thirteen-foot papier-mâché St Joseph holding the child Jesus with the sign: ‘‘AngGays support gender parity in child care.’’ To the annoyance of many in the diocese, a prominent member of AngGays, Fabian LoSchiavo, was a member of synod, representing the inner suburban parish of Enmore, and spoke on the subject of homosexuality whenever he could.
From 1983 AngGays became more confrontational. Politically they were naive. In the Sydney diocesan synod that year LoSchiavo issued a direct challenge. He put a motion on the notice paper: ‘‘Synod is of the opinion that homosexuality is not a bar to any ministry of this Church.’’ The motion was not debated but was referred to the diocesan standing committee which in turn appointed a special committee to consider it, with Broughton Knox among its members. In 1985 this produced a report on ‘‘Homosexuality and Ministry,’’ which laid down (‘‘It is clear from God’s Word… ’’) that known homosexuals (defined rather narrowly as ‘‘persons who engage in homosexual acts or follow a homosexual lifestyle’’) ‘‘cannot properly occupy any office or perform any duty which involves ministry within the Christian fellowship.’’ These included offices such as churchwarden and parish councillor, synod representative, lay reader, Sunday school teacher, youth group leader, organist, choir member, parish secretary, and verger.
In 1985 the diocesan synod endorsed the report and some zealous clergymen began to implement it. Already at St Barnabas’, Broadway, an inner-city church, the rector had been conducting a campaign against several lesbian members of his congregation. He instructed the one who remained, an articulate defender of her position, not to take part in the Holy Communion. In February 1985 the parish council unanimously passed a resolution supporting his position: ‘‘that unrepentant sinners including homosexuals should repent and not attend the Lord’s Supper, whilst unrepentant.’’ So the woman found her position intolerable and left the congregation. At St Luke’s, Enmore, the rector came under pressure from the regional bishop to end his quiet support for AngGays and to have LoSchiavo removed as a parish synod representative. He refused, and soon afterwards was pushed into resignation. In the parish of Frenchs Forest a young medical doctor on the staff of the Albion Street AIDS Clinic, who told his rector that he was homosexual, was told by letter that ‘‘I have been advised that in the present circumstances I am justified in not administering the sacrament of Holy Communion to you.’’ These may have been the only occasions in the modern history of the Anglican Church in Australia in which individuals have been excommunicated. In 1986 AngGays wrote to prominent Anglican bishops around the world, hoping to mobilize a protest against the ‘‘Homosexuality and Ministry’’ report. However, most bishops, even if sympathetic, were unwilling to intervene in the affairs of an independent diocese and only Bishop Paul Moore of New York publicly attacked the Sydney synod’s policy. AngGays ran out of steam as its members found other causes more rewarding and dissolved itself in 1990. Most of its members have since dropped out of the Anglican Church.
What did AngGays achieve? For its own members it had been an exhausting but exciting twelve years. ‘‘Only History will reveal what effect we have had on Sydney Diocese and the wider Church, but we believe the seeds we have sown will bear fruit in time.’’ In relation to the diocese of Sydney, however, its tactics were probably counterproductive. Its existence as an activist organization enraged a large number of clergy and synod representatives and made it hard for moderate evangelicals not to support the most conservative voices in the diocese on homosexuality. The attempt in 1983 to make the diocese declare a position on nondiscrimination led directly to the ‘‘Homosexuality and Ministry’’ report two years later.
The policy of the diocese of Sydney on homosexuality from the 1970s had three components. Firstly, there was resistance to any moves to change the existing state laws that proscribed homosexual behavior. For some years the combined efforts of the conservative churches, the Festival of Light, the right wing of the state branch of the Australian Labor Party and the state Liberal Party had prevented the New South Wales government from changing the law, but they were defeated in 1984 when state premier Neville Wran, in a private member’s bill, pushed through legislation which repealed the legal penalties against male homosexual behavior. On this issue the church eventually lost.
Secondly, the diocese sought the exclusion of known ‘‘practicing’’ homosexuals and lesbians from the Christian fellowship. It was not possible to implement this policy consistently, because outside a few congregations gay men and lesbians were usually invisible and many clergy were reluctant to enforce it, but the diocese was able to legislate that homosexuality was a bar to both the ordained ministry and any other public ministry in the church. No other diocese in the Anglican Communion spelled out its policy so clearly and specifically.
Thirdly, homosexuals were to be encouraged to change their sexual orientation, or at least to give up the ‘‘homosexual lifestyle.’’ This was more difficult to implement. In 1981 the diocesan synod resolved to request its standing committee to establish a counselling service for homosexuals ‘‘desirous of leaving the ‘gay’ scene’’ and ‘‘potential homosexuals in our congregations, struggling between ‘gay’ and God.’’ The Anglican Counselling Service was asked to initiate personal counselling work and was given grants for the purpose, but it had few clients. Another special committee in 1985 found that this approach was not sufficiently aggressive and recommended that a person with proven gifts of ministry to homosexual people be appointed to establish a specialized counselling service specifically for homosexuals who wished to change their lifestyle.46 Nothing was done. The policy reappeared in June 1994 when representatives of True Freedom Trust, an English evangelical ‘‘ministry to homosexuals,’’ visited Sydney, with Anglican support, to advise on the setting up of a similar organization. This led to the formation later that year of the interdenominational Liberty Christian Ministries.
There are signs that the diocese of Sydney in the 1990s is less punitive in its attitude towards homosexuality than it was. A recent book of essays published by Moore College on the subject may indicate a shift towards a stance that is less condemnatory and more pastoral, though always with the goal of encouraging homosexuals to achieve sexual reorientation. St John’s, Darlinghurst, an evangelical church in the heart of the ‘‘gay ghetto,’’ has joined Christ Church St Laurence in providing a ministry to people with AIDS, and in 1994 the diocese set up AIDSLink, to educate church members about AIDS and to encourage pastoral work among people with HIV and AIDS.
In conclusion, what were the reasons for the unusually strong stand taken by the Anglican Church in Sydney towards homosexuality and the gay movement?
- An evangelical emphasis on the supreme authority of the Bible as the Word of God, whose meaning is clear in its own terms, transcending the historical context.
- Strongly held views on the primacy of the male-female relationship and particular gender roles, which were seen as Godgiven, whereas homosexuality seemed to subvert and diminish the traditional roles of men and women. This may explain much of the intensity of the Sydney debate.
- An expectation that the state should support the church in matters of morality.
- A combative and confrontational style, which tended to take up absolute positions and define boundaries of exclusion rather than search for common ground.
- The personal influence of Broughton Knox, principal of the diocesan theological college.
- An implicit association of homosexuality with Anglo-Catholicism.
- The birth of the gay movement in Sydney and the growth of one of the largest gay communities in the English-speaking world.
- Reaction against the campaigns of gay militants in general and AngGays in particular.
- The difficulty on the part of the church of modifying an initial ‘‘hard’’ position because it would be seen as a concession to ‘‘the enemy.’’ Indeed, under pressure, the diocese may have been pushed into a more extreme position than would otherwise have been the case.
It was a uniquely explosive combination.