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AE: Yup. So even though I think it's great that civil partnerships have been legalised in the UK, there is a part of me that hopes that the government will eventually go on and call it marriage. I know the word ‘marriage' has that religious connotation that is problematic for some people, but I suppose I see it also as something that can just be a civil institution. I mean a lot of heterosexual people don't necessarily have any kind of a religious ceremony, they get married in a registry office. So I suppose I feel like--
JB: Sure, no, I understand what you're saying, but what happens is you get the religious right---is it left or right, I can never remember?

AE: Right [laughs].
JB: You get the religious groups--

AE: The Religious Wrong [laughs].
JB: The religious wrong, who grab onto the marriage word, because they think it is religious, because [they] are married in a church.

And I agree with you, you can be married in a non-religious [ceremony]. And that's not to say I'm not religious, because I do believe in God, and I believe that I was created as I am, and that He loves me, or She... you know, whoever God may be, that Creator loves me and created me this way for a reason. And my mother believes that, my father believes that, my family believe that. [But] it's something that then those religious groups take that word ‘marriage' because they think they own it. And that's what a lot of those religious groups do - they think they own God. And they don't. They don't own God. God owns us.

AE: Well, one thing I do see as being positive in the US is that the United Church of Christ, which is a mainline Protestant denomination and has about a million members, has actually passed a resolution endorsing same-sex marriage.
JB: Yup, and there is, I think it's an [openly] gay Bishop [Episcopalian Gene Robinson, who was elected Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003 and entered office in 2004]... I know what you're talking about, yeah.

AE: Yeah. So I think that's great. I mean, personally I'm not religious, but my hope in the long term would be that gay people wouldn't have to feel this tension between their sexuality and their religion. And that they could, if that's what's right for them [personally], be an accepted member of a church, and get married in a church.
JB: Well I'll be honest with you, I don't feel that [tension]. I feel very comfortable with my sexuality, with my religion, because my Christianity is not the Christianity that preaches hatred.

AE: Yup. But I suppose I hope that that could be, in the end, the development that Christianity overall will take, that it will become more accepting.
JB: You know, you know, I'd love to agree with you on that one, but I don't think it will. I just don't think there ever will be... calm, and [laughs] agreement.

AE: [laughs] Well, no-one's ever... I mean, it's never going to be that everyone agrees.
JB: The people, the majority who cause the trouble now, will eventually be pushed into a very small minority. Because what will happen over the years is, more and more people will be brave to come out and live honest lives, being gay or lesbian. And the people who are their parents, their brothers and sisters, will be church members in those other churches. And they will realise that they are being preached that their children, their loved ones, are evil. And eventually people will get smarter. And they will say no, this is not right. This is not right.

So eventually things will change. I mean--if I can quote Rosie O'Donnell--I was in America a couple of weeks ago, and I was watching a show she was doing, she was being interviewed by Diane Sawyer. And I thought it brilliant, a phrase that she came up with. She said, “To all those religious people and conservatives”, she said “I just want to tell them, it takes two straight people to make a gay person.”

And she said not only that, but, “Dick Cheney and his wife, who are the most religious and conservative people, created a gay child. So you can't say it is your upbringing. You can't say it is your environment. Because it's not.”

AE: That's so true, that's such a good point.
JB: Please quote that I got it from Rosie, because I'm now using that [in the UK] to help the cause. And it was such a brilliant statement she made.

AE: The other thing is, I don't know if they will ever be able to work out what exactly it is that causes sexual orientation.
JB: Who, who cares?

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