By George Conger

The Anglican Church of Canada’s establishment lost control over the deliberations of its General Synod, when the day after the leadership backed away from a resolution authorising the blessing of same-sex unions, liberal delegates broke ranks and forced through a resolution affirming homosexual behavior as holy.
The decision to sacralise homosexual relations arose in the form of a political declaration that monogamous homosexual relationships are morally analogous to monogamous heterosexual relationships – a decision that left traditionalists questioning whether they worshipped the same God as the majority.
The vote was “a repudiation of Lambeth and the Primates” stated Chris Hawley of Anglican Essentials, a conservative group. “The decision to sanctify same-sex relationships represents a last-minute, back-door approval of what the church decided it needed three more years to study.”
The Church’s latest, and gravest, crisis over homosexuality had its genesis in a February decision by the Council of General Synod [COGS] to reject advice it had solicited from a consulting firm. The Church’s consultants recommended deferring action on same-sex blessings until 2007 arguing that the Church was too divided to come to any accommodation this year.
In introducing the measure to General Synod on behalf of COGS, Bishop Fred Hiltz of Nova Scotia argued a “local option”, giving each diocese the authority to sanction same-sex blessings, regularised the status quo and was not a modification of doctrine.
Canon Gregory Cameron, Secretary to the Primates’ Commission, undercut Bishop Hiltz’s call for enlightened expediency and offered the delegates a stark choice. “If you say ‘no’ to the motions before you, then you will be in danger of letting down the thousands of gay people in your midst, who are part of your Canadian family, as well as all those others who are looking towards the Anglican Church of Canada to set a new standard in dealing with this issue.”
“But if you say ‘yes’, the work of the Lambeth Commission becomes horribly complicated….we will be told that the Anglican Church of Canada refuses to hear the voice, or to heed the concerns of your fellow Anglicans in the growing Provinces of the Global South, who are your international family.”
The two debates that followed Canon Cameron’s sobering remarks revealed a divided house.  Three nights of arm-twisting by leaders of Anglican Essentials, and overseas Church leaders, coupled with a desire to be obedient to the mind of the wider Communion prompted COGS on the eve of the final debate to withdraw the resolution and offer an amendment deferring action on a ‘local option’ until 2007.
Liberal delegates voiced their outrage at the ‘sell out’ by COGS, but fell into line, for when the votes were tallied the amendment passed 142 to 118 among the clerical and lay delegates and 22 to 12 among the Bishops.
After the vote Canon Garth Bulmer of Ottawa asked Synod to affirm the “integrity and sanctity” of homosexual relationships.  Canon Bulmer stated he “didn’t mean the word [sanctity] in a sort of technical, theological sense, so much as a pastoral sense.”
The seconder of the motion, Archdeacon Dennis Drainville of Quebec, however, said the word ‘sanctity’ was chosen “to indicate our belief that when two people commit themselves in a relationship that in the midst of that relationship God will be found.”
Conservatives argued the amendment was theologically unacceptable. Youth delegate Robin Hansen of Edmonton said she was “not prepared to say that after 2000 years of Church teaching we in one generation can say ‘no, you guys are all wrong and we know the truth’.”