Two days ago, we shared the story of Rev. Kelvin Holdsworth urging LGBTQ-friendly Christians to pray that the United Kingdom’s Prince George would grow up to be gay.
He stated this in his blog post titled “How to Change the Church of England – Quick Recap.”
On the 10-step list that was posted back in January, the ninth step was the following:
“If people don’t want to engage in campaigning in this way, they do in England have another unique option, which is to pray in the privacy of their hearts (or in public if they dare) for the Lord to bless Prince George with a love, when he grows up, of a fine young gentleman. A royal wedding might sort things out remarkably easily though we might have to wait 25 years for that to happen. Who knows whether that might be sooner than things might work out by other means?”
As a response to the public attention to the earlier post, Rev. Holdsworth wrote a new blog post in which he apologized to the Royal family for unintentionally causing a stir, and said we should focus back on finding a way to make the Christian church more welcoming to LGBTQ people.
“I could spend the next few weeks defending that post and keep reminding people what it was originally about. However, it seems to me that isn’t likely to be fruitful. The ironic comment that I made quite a while ago could be seen as hurtful to members of the Royal Family, a group of people whom I actually rather admire.”
“I’m sorry that something that I wrote has been interpreted in the way that it has. It was not my intention to cause hurt and I regret that this has led to the current focus on Prince George.”
“Sadly, this has now become a story entirely about Prince George. I’ve had countless invitations to appear in the press and media over the next week. I’ve refused them all and will continue to do so,” Holdsworth says.
“I have found most of the invitations rather tasteless – as though media organisations actually wanted to have a prolonged conversation about a small boy rather than discuss the issues of justice and fairness that I was trying to raise. We’ve seen media frenzies around the Royal Family before. No doubt we will see them again. I’m sorry that I inadvertently provoked this one by something I wrote some time ago.”
“The debate about the church and sexuality will go on,” he states.
“I’m not interested in continuing it through a conversation about Prince George. I would urge others, those who agree with me strongly and those who disagree with me strongly to turn our attentions to the actual matter at hand.”
