THE Bishop of Gloucester Michael Perham has released a statement after the House of Lords voted overwhelmingly in favour of legalising same-sex marriage yesterday (Tuesday, June 4).

His statement reads as follows:

"On Monday and Tuesday of this week I have fulfilled a number of long-standing engagements in the Diocese of Gloucester, among them interviews with men and women whom I am to ordain as deacons and priests later this month, the licensing of a school chaplain and a day making a pastoral visit to one of my parishes. I could have cancelled these engagements to be in the House of Lords and many people wrote to me asking me to do so.

"I did not do so because I knew, after consultation with other bishops, that there would be sufficient bishops able to be present to signify the Church’s difficulties with the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill and to speak about those difficulties. It is never the practice of the bishops in the House of Lords to gather in such numbers as to defeat as a group, a proposal that would otherwise be passed. The vote in the House at the end of debate indicates that it would, in any case, have been futile to have tried to do so.

"I hold to my previously expressed view that the proposal relating to same-sex marriage has been brought to parliament without careful thought or genuine consultation and with undue haste. I think it misguided to redefine marriage, making it no longer necessarily the union of a man and a woman, though I am grateful that the Government has been careful to protect the Church’s traditional teaching on this matter. But I accept that the bill has now received overwhelming support in both Houses of Parliament and that the task of the Church, through the bishops, is now to respect the view that has been so clearly endorsed and to argue for any amendments that might make the legislation more acceptable to those whose consciences are troubled.

"I share the view expressed by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the debate that the Church has not often served the LGBT communities in the way it should. I hope we shall be more affirming and supportive for the future and in particular that the House of Bishops Working Party on Human Sexuality, of which I am a member, will be able to help the Church towards a more positive valuing of committed and faithful homosexual partnerships.

"In the light of the suggestion in the Telegraph that bishops had been put under pressure by Church of England officials to abstain from voting on the Bill, I need to say very firmly that no such pressure was put on me (nor, I think, on any bishop). The pressure that we have experienced has been an unprecedented campaign of letters, emails and phone calls from those urging us to vote against the Second Reading of the Bill. Although I usually try to answer such letters and emails, I regret that the sheer number of such on this issue has made that impossible and this statement is intended as a courteous answer to all who have been in contact with me."