Broad acceptance of gay marriage represented one of the most extraordinary shifts of public opinion on a major social issue in American history. In 1996, the Defense of Marriage Act sailed through both chambers of Congress and was signed into law by Bill Clinton. In 2004, the year eleven states passed bans on gay marriage in ballot measures, Americans opposed gay marriage by a two-to-one margin (or 60 percent to 31 percent), according to the Pew Research Center.

Freud

With Fr Michael Nazir-Ali, Jonathan Goodall and John Goddard, that makes four Church of England bishops who in the last year have abandoned Anglicanism and asked to be reconciled to the mother church.

Some people will look at the tally of converts growing and simply be grateful that such people of proven spiritual calibre have set aside the tragic schism that wounded the body of Christ in these islands and the process of their reconversion.

My friend told me that pastors in five different churches in the southern region of his state reported at the conference the same phenomenon. They have had strangers come and join their congregations, and six months or so later, come out as transgender, and demand their rights as official members of the congregation. It has happened to so many of these churches, in the same period of time, that they believe it is part of a concerted effort to undermine those churches.