Religion, Christianity in particular, will feature at Sydney’s world Pride LGBTQIA festival that started with the Mardi Gras march on the weekend.
Sydney will host “the largest LGBTQIA+ Human Rights Conference ever to be held in the southern hemisphere”. Several of the speakers are high-profile campaigners for change in Christianity.
Jayne Ozanne, a leader of the LGBTQIA movement in the Church of England will be a guest at World pride Human Rights Conference. She was an evangelical member of the Archbishop’s Council in the early 2000s, living a celibate life “and said at that time she “did not believe it was compatible to be gay and a Christian.” She came out publically as a lesbian in 2018, declaring “God is a God of surprises.” She had subjected herself to “deliverance” ministries exorcisms,
Ozone moved an amendment at the recent Church of England General Synod (church parliament) to bring same-sex marriage on their agenda for mid-year. Her amendment lost, but the Bishop’s plan to have prayers blessing same-sex couples has been accepted.
She is a full-time campaigner, and director of the Ozanne Foundation which she set up to work with religious organisations to “end discrimination based on sexuality or gender.”
Ozanne is a “go to” commentator in the UK media. She told the press this week that the Church of England’s bishops’ decision not to back same-sex marriage was “utterly despicable”
She will be joined on the presenters’ panel at the Human Rights Conference by Josephine Inkpin, a transgender Anglican Priest who is currently the minister at Pitt street Uniting Church in Sydney.She was the first openly trangender person to be licensed as an Anglican priest in Australia – The Other Cheek understands there are three.
Jo Inkpin is also the Co-chair of Equal Voices, a peak Australian network that advocates for LGBTIQA+ people in churches. Through the University of Divinity in Melbourne, she recently created the first Australian-accredited Queer Theology university unit.
It is likely that these speakers will be platformed in the major media quite widely.
Update: the “y” went missing from Jayne’s name, now fixed.
Image: Pride flag Credit: zeevveez/flickr