Marriage, Monogamy and the Queer Anglican Modelling of Same-Sex Unions from the 1970s

In the queer Anglican history of the modelling of same-sex unions, radical queer Christian perspectives and experiments – aspects of which continue to make the Church uncomfortable – may be dismissed by some as the product of an age in which marriage was inaccessible to and apparently unwanted by queer people. But although the embrace of marriage equality by a number of Anglican churches of the global West undoubtedly constitutes the start of a new chapter of queer Anglican history, many Anglicans in same-sex unions today still claim the legacy of a nonlinear, messy queer Christian history of modelling same-sex relationships. They see important lessons in it about what the distinctiveness of the queer experience says about marriage. The questions that arise from these queer Anglican stories warn against the risk of church attitudes that fossilise the meaning of marriage, thereby facilitating oppressive marriage scripts that are alien to the Gospel.