A clergyman who called the Church of England’s first trans woman archdeacon a “bloke” should not be punished, a disciplinary tribunal has ruled. The Times has the story.
Brett Murphy was an Anglican priest when he posted comments to his 14,000 YouTube subscribers in which he commented on the appointment of Rachel Mann as the Archdeacon of Bolton and Salford [a diocesan position akin to a regional manager] last year.
Murphy said that Mann was “in fact, biologically, a bloke, who identifies and lives as a woman”. He also described Mann as a “fella”.
He went on to speculate whether the appointment indicated that the Anglican hierarchy was “positioning” Mann to become the Church of England’s first transsexual bishop. “What you are seeing here is someone who is a radical rainbow activist being put in a position of high authority in a diocese,” Murphy said in his video.
Despite Murphy subsequently leaving the church over objections to its plans to introduce same-sex blessings to places of worship, a complaint was made against him under official clergy discipline measures.
At a first hearing last year, the Bishop of Loughborough, the Right Rev Saju Muthulay, rejected the complaint, but the issue was reopened after the original complainant requested a review.
But this week David Turner KC, Deputy President of the church’s disciplinary tribunal, ruled that Murphy had no case to answer.
Recommending to Muthulay that the complaint should be dismissed, Turner said that while use of the terms bloke and fella to refer to Mann were “arguably highly insensitive”, they were “not in themselves offensive words”.
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