The Bajan who heads Missouri’s Episcopal Diocese is disappointed and saddened by the reaction of some Barbadians to the prospect of partners in civil unions involving same-sex couples being given the same legal rights and protection as heterosexuals.
“It seems almost an over-reaction of sorts to the Barbados Government’s announced intention to recognise the rights of all partners in civil unions,” Bishop Deon Johnson said from his home in Missouri.
“Just looking at how people (in Barbados) “are responding to offering civil rights to their fellow citizens, especially folks who claim to follow Jesus, are calling Christians first to love God, to love neighbours as ourselves. . .. It seems counter to what it means to be Christian to try to say that somebody else is right to say that something I have isn’t acceptable to somebody else.”
Johnson was elected overwhelmingly to Missouri’s Episcopal Church’s bishopric last year, but his role in the United States has not been publicly acknowledged by the Anglican church in Barbados, where he served in the St Philip Parish Church as a youthful altar server. (TB)
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