Married gay clergyman has NHS job offer withdrawn
By Sam Rigby
Married gay clergyman Jeremy Pemberton has been blocked from taking a new job as an NHS chaplain and bereavement manager.
The Acting Bishop for Southwell and Nottingham, the Right Reverend Richard Inwood, wrote to the Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust explaining that he would not be giving Pemberton a new licence, BBC News reports.
Pemberton became the first British clergyman to enter into a same-sex marriage when he wed long-term partner Laurence Cunnington in April – read more here.
Pemberton said that he is “very, very disappointed” with the NHS’s decision to withdraw his job offer.
He added: “I’ve now been treated, I think, in an unfair and rather harsh way in Southwell and Nottingham, whereas I’m now going to carry on doing the job I have been doing in Lincolnshire where I have a licence.
“So I’ve been treated in an inconsistent way, and the House of Bishops can’t agree amongst themselves what ought to be the processes that somebody who enters a same-sex marriage should go through.”