Rowan Williams: Gay relationships ‘comparable to marriage’

(The Times) – Rowan Williams believes that gay sexual relationships can “reflect the love of God” in a way that is comparable to marriage, The Times has learnt.

Gay partnerships pose the same ethical questions as those between men and women, and the key issue for Christians is that they are faithful and lifelong, he believes.

Dr Williams is known to be personally liberal on the issue but the strength of his views, revealed in private correspondence shown to The Times, will astonish his critics.

The news threatens to reopenbitter divisions over ordaining gay priests, which pushed the Anglican Communion towards a split.

As Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Williams recommitted the Anglican Communion to its orthodox position that homosexual practice is incompatible with Scripture at the Lambeth Conference, which closed on Sunday.

However, in an exchange of letters with an evangelical Christian, written eight years ago when he was Archbishop of Wales, he described his belief that biblical passages criticising homosexual sex were not aimed at people who were gay by nature.

He argued that scriptural prohibitions were addressed to heterosexuals looking for sexual variety. He wrote: “I concluded that an active sexual relationship between two people of the same sex might therefore reflect the love of God in a way comparable to marriage, if and only if it had about it the same character of absolute covenanted faithfulness.” Dr Williams described his view as his “definitive conclusion” reached after 20 years of study and prayer. He drew a distinction between his own beliefs as a theologian and his position as a church leader, for which he had to take account of the traditionalist view.

The letters, written in the autumn of 2000 and 2001, were exchanged with Deborah Pitt, a psychiatrist and evangelical Christian living in his former archdiocese in South Wales, who had written challenging him on the issue.

In reply, he described how his view began to change from that of opposing gay relationships in 1980. His mind became “unsettled” by contact as a university teacher with Christian students who believed that the Bible forbade promiscuity rather than gay sex.

Dr Williams, who was ordained a priest in 1978, became a lecturer at Cambridge two years later and was appointed Dean of Clare College in 1984.

He told Dr Pitt that by the end of the 1980s he had “definitely come to the conclusion” that the Bible did not denounce faithful relationships between people who happened to be gay.

He cited two academics as pivotal in influencing his view. One of them was Jeffrey John, the celibate homosexual whom he later forced not to become Bishop of Reading after an outcry from conservatives.

In his 1989 essay The Body’s Grace, Dr Williams argued that the Church’s acceptance of contraception meant that it acknowledged the validity of nonprocreative sex. This could be taken as a green light for gay sex.

Liberals have been bitterly disappointed that a man whom they regarded as chosen to advance their agenda has instead abided by the traditionalist consensus of the majority.

In the correspondence Dr Williams wrote of his regret that the issue had become “very much politicised” and was treated by many as “the sole or primary marker of Christian orthodoxy”.

Asked to comment yesterday, Lambeth Palace quoted a recent interview in which the Archbishop said: “When I teach as a bishop I teach what the Church teaches. In controverted areas it is my responsibility to teach what the Church has said and why.”

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The not so Good, The Bad and The Ugly

• For much of the twentieth century, the AMA opposed publicly-funded health care. When the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act was passed in the U.S., the AMA supported a federal law, but recommended cannabis to be added to the Harrison Narcotic Act.
• In the 1930s, the AMA attempted to prohibit its members from working for the primitive health maintenance organizations that sprung up during the Great Depression. The AMA’s subsequent conviction for violating the Sherman Antitrust Act was affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court. American Medical Ass’n. v. United States, 317 U.S. 519 (1943).
• The AMA’s vehement campaign against Medicare in the 1950s and 1960s included the Operation Coffee Cup supported by Ronald Reagan. Since the enactment of Medicare, the AMA stated that it “continues to oppose attempts to cut Medicare funding or shift increased costs to beneficiaries at the expense of the quality or accessibility of care” and “strongly supports subsidization of prescription drugs for Medicare patients based on means testing”. The AMA also campaigns to raise Medicare payments to physicians, arguing that increases will protect seniors’ access to health care. In the 1990s, it was part of the coalition that defeated the health care reform proposed by President Bill Clinton.
• The AMA has given high priority to supporting changes in medical malpractice law to limit damage awards, which, it contends, makes it difficult for patients to find appropriate medical care. In many states, high risk specialists have moved to other states with such limits. For example, in 2004, not a single neurosurgeon remained in the entire southern half of Illinois. The main legislative emphasis in multiple states has been to effect caps on the amount that patients can receive for pain and suffering. These costs for pain and suffering are only those that exceed the actual costs of health-care and lost income. Multiple states found that limiting pain and suffering costs has actually dramatically slowed increases in the cost of medical malpractice insurance. Texas, having recently enacted such reforms, reported that all major malpractice insurers in 2005 were able to offer either no increase or a decrease in premiums to physicians. At the same time however, states without caps also experienced similar results; this suggests the cyclical nature of insurance markets may have actually been responsible. Some economic studies have found that caps have historically had a dubious effect on premium rates. Nevertheless, the AMA believes the caps may alleviate what is often perceived as an excessively litigious environment for many doctors.
• Another top priority of the AMA is to lobby for change to the federal tax codes to allow the current health insurance system (based on employment) to be purchased by individuals. Such changes could possibly allow millions of currently uninsured Americans to be able to afford insurance through a series of refundable tax credits based on income (for example, the lower your income, the greater your credit).
• The AMA has made efforts to respond to health care disparities.
  • As such the AMA created an Advisory committees to assess the nature of disparities within different racial and ethnic groups. One such committee focuses on the health of the Gay, Lesbian Bisexual and Trans-gender community. In 2005, the AMA president Edward Hill, MD gave a keynote address to the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association at its annual conference. Since that time, the AMA has worked closely with GLMA to develop AMA policy towards better health care access for LGBT patients and better working environments for LGBT physicians and medical students.
  • The AMA responded to the government estimate that more than 35 million Americans live in under-served areas by stating it would take 16,000 doctors to immediately fill that need, and the gap is expected to widen due to rising population and aging work force. “And that will mostly be felt in rural America,” said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., adding, “We’re facing a real crisis.” Fueling the shortage crisis are the restrictions on allowing foreign physicians to work in the U.S. post the September 11, 2001 attack, and may become more restrictive after the attempted terrorist bombings June 2007 in Britain, still under investigation, linked to foreign doctors.
• In June 2007, at its annual meeting, the AMA, discussed its opposition to a fast-spreading nationwide trend for medical clinics to open up in supermarkets and drugstores. The AMA identified at least two problems with in-store clinics: potential conflict of interest, and potential jeopardized quality of care. The AMA went on to rally state and federal agencies to investigate the relationship between the operating clinics and the pharmacy chains to decide if this practice should be prohibited or regulated. Dr. Peter Carmel, neurosurgeon and AMA board member asked, “If you own both sides of the operation, shouldn’t people look at that?” The AMA also noted some employers reduce or waive the co-payment if an employee goes to the retail clinic instead of the doctor’s office, inferring that this practice might negatively effect quality of care.
• The AMA has affirmed, through continual policy statement (policies H-460.957,H-460.974,H-460.964,H-460.991, and resolution 506-2007 for example), its support for appropriate and compassionate use of animals in biomedical research programs, and its opposition to the actions of other groups that impede such research, such as some actions from animal rights groups, and its opposition to legislation that unduly restricts such research.

Critics of the American Medical Association, including economist Milton Friedman, have asserted that the organization acts as a government-sanctioned guild and has attempted to increase physicians’ wages and fees limit by influencing limitations on the supply of physicians and non-physician competition. Friedman said, “The AMA has engaged in extensive litigation charging chiropractors and osteopaths with the unlicensed practice of medicine, in an attempt to restrict them to as narrow an area as possible.”. Critics who call the AMA a guild assert that these supply limiting actions not only have inflated the cost of health-care in the United States but also have caused a decline in the quality of health-care.

“Profession and Monopoly”, a book published in 1975 is critical of the AMA for limiting the supply of physicians and inflating the cost of medical care in the United States. The book claims that physician supply is kept low by the AMA to insure high pay for practicing physicians. It states that in the United States the number, curriculum, and size of medical schools are restricted by state licensing boards controlled by representatives of state medical societies associated with the AMA. The book is also critical of the ethical rules adopted by the AMA which restrict advertisement and other types of competition between professionals, it points out that advertising and bargaining can result in expulsion from the AMA and legal revocation of licenses. The book also states that before 1912 the AMA included uniform fees for specific medical procedures in its official code of ethics. The AMA’s influence on hospital regulation was also criticized in the book.

The AMA is also criticized because it derives a significant portion of its income by selling physician prescribing data to pharmaceutical companies. It continues to do this despite physician outcry, claiming approximately 33 million in revenue in 2005 from this practice. However, the AMA does allow physicians to “opt-out” of having their information shared through the Physician Data Restriction Program (PDRP).

Physician membership in the group has decreased to lower than 19% of practicing physicians. In 2004, AMA reported membership totals of 244,569, which included retired and practicing physicians along with medical students, residents, and fellows. The medical school section (MSS) reported totals of 48,868 members, while the resident and fellow section (RFS) reported 24,069 members. Combined they account for almost 30% of AMA members. If every other member of the AMA was a fully qualified practicing physician than the AMA would represent 19% of America’s practicing physicians (There are currently approximately 900,000 practicing physicians in America). However, MedPage Today estimates that the AMA only represents 135,300 “real, practicing physicians” as of 2005 (15.0% of the United States practicing physicians). When asked about this, Jeremy Lazarus, MD, a speaker in the AMA House of Delegates, stated that membership was stable, avoiding commenting on the low overall numbers (2005 AMSA annual meeting, AMA vs. PNHP healthcare debate, Arlington, Va.).

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