February is LGBT History month in the UK. 2012 is also the diamond jubilee year of Queen Elizabeth, who this week marked the 60th anniversary of her accession to the British throne. The jubilee will be the theme of this year's Quest annual conference, "SIXTY GLORIOUS YEARS," for which the two speakers will consider changing attitudes to homosexuality over this period in British society - and in the churches. The second of these, I will present, under the title "Blessed are the Queer in Faith - for they shall inherit the Church". To coincide with LGBT History month, I want to begin preparing for my conference address by exploring the material for it, in a series of posts here at QTC.
Before looking too closely at the last sixty years though, it is necessary to consider briefly the preceding two thousand. There have always been prominent lgbt people in the church - at any rate, people that today we might characterise with the terms gay, lesbian, and trans, although the words and even the concepts would have been totally unfamiliar in their own day. More appropriately, we should simply describe them as "queer". However, the response of the Church to these people, and their place within it, have seen major changes over this long period. To understand these, with gross oversimplification, I break down these past years into four major eras. The past sixty years may be seen as the start of a fifth, a new era that we are only just entering.
