(The following is a letter from Bishop Swing concerning Resolution D039 and why he voted against the resolve to direct the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music to prepare rites for same-sex unions. Your comments are welcome.)

Resolution D039
General Convention
Denver, Colorado

The House of Deputies passed the first seven resolves of D039 and narrowly defeated the eighth resolve. Then the resolution was sent to the House of Bishops on July 12, 2000 for concurrence. The House of Bishops began by addressing the eighth resolve to see if it could be reinstated. After a day of thoughtful, heartfelt, candid debate, the motion to reinstate the eighth resolve was defeated by approximately twenty votes. (The eighth resolve directed the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music to prepare rites for consideration by the next Convention with the possibility of having a supportive liturgy of mutuality and fidelity for couples in relationships other than marriage, and this liturgy could be added to the Book of Occasional Services.)

I voted against reinstating the eighth resolve for the following reasons:

1. The Lambeth experience of 1998 had seared me. Section One bishops spent three weeks coming up with a deep, broad, and compassionate "Statement on Human Sexuality," a statement that would have constructed the foundation of a healthy worldwide conversation on human sexuality over the next ten years. But . . . a final amendment was tacked on at the end to give great triumph to the majority and to devastate us in the minority.

2. In my mind a similar scenario was being played out in D039. Seven resolves had been crafted by conservative and liberal bishops, who were unanimous that the seven resolves would be a reasonable and healthy starting place for our conversations on human sexuality during the next three years. The eighth resolve, in my mind, would have stopped the conversation, obliterated the seven resolves (as the final amendment did at Lambeth vis-a-vis the Sector One report), and would have been at best a Pyrrhic victory for some while devastating others. I had this done to me in 1998; I did not want to do it to others in 2000.

3. If the Episcopal Church passed them, the first seven resolves would represent a considerable stretch. For example, they imply that our heterosexual and homosexual Episcopalians are together on mission . . . that couples in the Body of Christ are heterosexual and homosexual . . . that all relationships need to be characterized by fidelity and monogamy and must denounce promiscuity and abusiveness . . . that some will, out of conscience, act in contradiction to the Church's traditional teaching . . . and that the bedrock foundation in the conversations is the Church's teaching on the sanctity of marriage.

This is a stretch indeed. To see conservative bishops on the presenting committee stand before the House and say that they would unanimously back these seven resolves as the curriculum for our conversation was a remarkable moment. Twelve years ago when I authored a report to General Convention for the Health and Human Affairs Commission, I presented every one of these same points and was hooted off the floor. We have come a long way, together. Adding the eighth resolve would have compromised the impact of the seven. Without the eighth resolve, the vote on concurrence with the Deputies on D039 was 119 yes, 19 no, 4 abstaining.

4. This was not my primary thinking, but also I didn't want to give an easy victory to boutique, schismatic Episcopalians who were standing in the wings ready to harvest the organs from deadly sex wars in the Church. With tortured logic, there is a serious movement to invite Episcopal congregations to leave the Episcopal Church (because of sex and the Bible) but remain Anglican by way of Singapore, South Carolina, and Rwanda -- designer Anglicans not in communion with Canterbury but with Pawley's Island. To bequeath a sizeable legacy of Episcopal congregations to this crowd by our actions in Denver, simply because we couldn't exercise restraint, would have been an act of complicity with ecclesiastical insanity.

5. In my conversations with conservative bishops and with liberal bishops, there seems to be total agreement about where the Episcopal Church is going on issues of human sexuality. At Denver there was not one resolution about ordaining gay and lesbian people to the diaconate or priesthood. Gay and lesbian people are ordained openly throughout this nation. Not everywhere, but in many places. We haven't voted ourselves into a new reality; we have lived into the new reality. No Prayer Book rubric had to be changed.

With blessings of same-sex couples, no Prayer Book rubric will change, and no service will be included in the Prayer Book. What will happen in time will be that we will live into a theological understanding of blessing same-sex couples as we get more deeply involved in developing the liturgies. Ultimately a liturgy will be included in the Book of Occasional Services. This will not be identical to the marriage service nor will it be simply a mirror of the marriage service. Same-sex couples will be blessed in the Episcopal Church in a unique way according to the Book of Occasional Services. Marriage itself will continue to have its central place.

6. This is a tangential point but important. Several bishops and outside groups kept making the point that homosexuals and homosexual couples are a threat to the institution of marriage. Not so! They are a threat, but not to marriage. Heterosexuals are a threat to marriage. Homosexual couples are a threat to the traditional institution of family. Homosexuals are kicked out of families and disowned. Then when they form their own families, they are abandoned by the Church. And when they raise their children, society treats them as being scandalously selfish. Nevertheless, we are all going to have to grow up and realize that the institution of family is changing before our eyes. Churches need to have family values -- values for the big, emerging family that has redefined itself.

I hated to vote against the eighth resolve. I could see the faces of Tom and Ron, Erica and Mila, my goddaughter and her partner, and scores of other loving couples who have been scarred by the entrenched Church. They bravely kept going upstream, and I wanted to be in solidarity with them on all occasions. But in Denver I saw a chance for a very divided Church to find a place of common ground. We can grow from that common ground rather than fracture more deeply.

A bishop friend of mine from a far off country listened in the gallery to the debate in Denver and said to me, "I had no idea of the anguish in your House. I always thought of Americans as brash people who would knock the door down and declare that you are of one mind -- and everyone else had better fall in line. The hurt and the listening and the human courtesy were unexpected."

Lots of unexpected things happened in Denver.

The Rt. Rev. William E. Swing
Bishop, Diocese of California