Graham Kennedy, radio and TV comedian and accomplished film actor (They're a Weird Mob 1968, The Odd, Angry Shot 1978, The Club 1980, The Return of Captain Invincible 1982, The Killing Fields 1983, Stanley 1983, Travelling North 1987) died yesterday aged only 71. These are some extracts from Peter Gavin's perceptive review of Graeme Blundel's biography of Graham Kennedy, King: the life and comedy of Graham Kennedy (Macmillan, 2003, 500pp).

[Kennedy's] career spanned 40 years. But the sad part is that he never seemed to find love or happiness. He was the ultimate showbiz trouper: there seemed no life beyond the next script or deal. Towards the end there was little left for the king to conquer. The story finishes with him ailing: sick and secluded. Loved by his friends and missed by his fans, he read the early chapters of this book and liked it, but decided he didn't want to read any more because, as he says, "I know how it ends."

This Graham Kennedy is the one we know. Fast on his feet but remote, cranky, impatient with stardom, his constant quips revealing a hankering for applause. The man who wouldn't swear in company yet built an individual comedy style around innuendo of the crudest kind, who alarmed the censors and amused the nation when he made a crow call that sounded like "Faaaarrrrrkkk!" on his national Tonight Show.

Blundell adds several extra dimensions to this tabloid feature image. Until now Kennedy never really seemed a figure of pathos, perhaps because Australia's pop culture icons have eluded the kind of elaborate scrutiny on offer here. King is a sustained celebration of Kennedy's gifts, but Blundell works in a motif of loss and regret and yearning so that every triumph is counterpointed with complex emotions. [...]

Particularly deft is the way [Blundell] handles Kennedy's sexuality. Blundell mirrors the comedian's own elusiveness by never baldly advancing a thesis on the subject. Instead Blundell lets friends speak for Kennedy, a technique that is both subtle and compassionate. There's a lovely moment when a friend tells how Kennedy would often call distraught after a relationship had failed. That the romance was homosexual is clear. (Read Queer Penguin's post on 'Gra-Gra's' sexuality.) But that revelation is secondary to the central dilemma of Kennedy's life: his celebrity didn't open up opportunities for sex or, as it happens, power or money. Instead, in Blundell's chronicle, Kennedy seemed cowed by his fame. And, what is worse, there seemed little else in his life but fame.

Kennedy was just 23 when he moved to from radio to television, still new and untried in Australia, and launched In Melbourne Tonight. It was a take-off of the American 'Tonight Show' format, with the host presiding over sketches, introducing star turns and reading advertisements live. Kennedy transformed the live reads into a comedic art form, slagging off the sponsor's products and extending the ads to the point of absurdity (one 20-second spot ran for over 20 minutes). The sponsors lapped it up and so did the audiences.

The shows were live-to-air and mostly chaotic and funny but sometimes self indulgent. Graeme Blundell writes,

He understood that it was the telling that was funny. There was no punch line as such, he would digress, he didn't know where he was going, but it was just hysterical. It has to do with notions of reality and identity: who you are when you tell jokes, who are you telling them to, where does it come from, how do you summon it up? Comedians always think about those things, which is why the language of comedy is the language of death; they say things like 'I died out there', 'We slayed them in the aisles'. Anyone who's been funny for a living, and I have, can tell you that. It's a terrible strain.

Television was introduced to Australia for the Melbourne Olympics in 1956. In the country, where I lived as a child, there was no reception and in any case TV sets were very expensive. I remember visiting my uncle in the city and staying up late to watch In Melbourne Tonight (in black and white). It continued until 1967. I remember it fondly and am sorry Graham Kennedy is gone.

In my last post, I mentioned the inestimable Kel Richards' book Word watch. I could mine this book for many posts, but must allow Mr Richards his copyright and his royalties! However, I do want to discuss his entry on homophobia

Homophobia
The prefix 'homo' comes from the Greek homos and means 'the same kind'. You can see this meaning at work in the word 'homogenous'. Thus homophobia literally means 'fear of the same kind'. Used correctly, homophobia would describe the fear of one homosexual for other homosexuals, or a heterosexual for other heterosexuals. Homophobia has a second failure as a word: it implies that failure to fully endorse the gay lifestyle is inspired by fear. Such a charge reduces intelligent discussion to a schoolyard sneer of 'scaredy cat'. Clearly, a new word is needed: homophobia just won't do the job.

I agree, but which new word? This is quite difficult, because we are trying to cram several concepts into one word -- 'against' or 'anti' ⁄ 'people' or 'behaviour' ⁄ 'associated with' ⁄ 'attraction to', or 'love of' ⁄ 'other people of the same sex'.

Two possibilities in use already are anti-homosexual and heterosexist -- both strictly an improvement on 'homophobia'. But they are don't have quite the same ring as 'homophobe!' when yelled out at a protest or political meeting!

'Miso', besides from being a kind of Japanese soup, helps make words like 'misogynist' (woman-hater) and 'misandrist' (man-hater). The trouble is that 'mishomosexual' sounds like the name of a drag queen, 'Miss Homosexual'. 'Mishomophile' is likewise, or 'mis' anything for that matter, unless the 'anything' can't work as a name.

In this discussion, Paul Niquette proposes use of the prefix/suffix 'taxis' to coin two new words:

1. gynotaxis n. The responsive movement of an organism toward a female; attraction of either gender to a woman.
2. androtaxis n. The responsive movement of an organism toward a male; attraction of either gender to a man. [Paul Niquette, excerpt from Sophistication: How to get it...then what! © 1996 by Resource Books, 1996.]

[Derivation -- taxis- combining form [Gk, lit., arrangement, order, fr. tassein to arrange] (1758) 1: reflex translational or orientational movement by a freely motile and usually simple organism in relation to a source of stimulation (as a light or a temperature or chemical gradient) 2: a reflex reaction involving a taxis source: Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary]

"These terms", Paul Niquette says, "relocate the distinction in sexual orientation from the attractee to the attractor. They dare to suppose that awareness of 'self' does not influence sexual orientation."

So . . . 'misotaxis' could be used to mean 'hatred of the attraction of one person to another' including same-sex attraction. 'Misohomotaxis' is more precise, but the shorter word will do. And hence 'misotaxic', 'misotaxia', etc.

That's the best I can offer. But, all in all, (sorry Mr Richards), I think we're stuck with homophobia as a word, if not as a reality. All the more so as the 1st annual International Day against Homophobia, IDAHO, was held in more than 40 Countries as recently as 17 May. It marks the day, 15 years ago, when homosexuality was removed from an official World Health Organisation's list of mental disorders. "Following this historic decision," says Louis-Georges Tin, Founder of IDAHO, "the goal of IDAHO, ILGA, and other supporting organizations is to have the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the United Nations Commission for Human Rights to condemn homophobia in its political, social, and cultural dimensions by recognizing this International Day Against Homophobia."

In a recent post about the writing of sonnets, I ignorantly described myself as "not a literary person." Only two days later, I find the following extract in Kel Richards' informative and amusing book, compiled from his short "Word Watch" pieces on ABC News Radio.

BFZ
American social commentator Charles Colson has coined the expression BFZ. This stands for'Book Free Zone', and he coined the phrase to lament those well-educated Americans -- highly literate people -- who choose to be non-literary. They are college graduates, says Colson, perfectly capable of reading, who choose not to.
Kel Richards' word watch. Sydney: Pan, 2001, p. 20.

The Concise Oxford dictionary says:

literary a. 1. Of, constituting, occupied with, literature or books and written composition esp. of the kind valued for quality of form; . . . "

So, through lack of literacy, I have described myself as a Book Free Zone. Agh! I spend half my life with books, hundreds and hundreds of them.

Hopefully I am literate, but I am not a literary personexpert in literary criticism (explanation of correction!). Yet I admire good writing and enjoy finely crafted short stories and essays. I am enjoying the Collected stories (London and New York: Fourth Estate, 2004) of Carol Shields CC, FRSC (1935-2003), which I discovered recently. (The collection seems to have had an odd publishing history. The Fourth Estate edition is defunct and it the collection is now out in a different cover with an introduction by Margaret Atwood.)

"Segue", the first story in the collection, is Shield's last work, not previously published. Its narrator and main character is a 67 year old poet who is married to a novelist, the other main character. She is a 'sonnet maker', whose discipline is to write a new sonnet every two weeks. I enjoyed the story and read it twice before going on to the next one. Though not the main point of "Segue", in passing I learned from it some things about the sonnet. (I also enjoy accessible poetry.)

"Sonnet writing [...] no longer confines itself to the professing and withdrawing of courtly love, although I insisted that a nod to such love is always hovering, or rather nudging. Is this notion true or just part of my fussy exegetic self?"

"A novel is about everything it touches upon, and so is a sonnet."

"[S]onnet means 'little sound.'"

"Sonnets are taken so strenuously, so literally, when taught at school, or at least they used to be, and the definition fourteen lines of rhymed iambic pentameter-hardens and ends up gesturing toward an artifact, an object one might construct from a kit. But if you picture the sonnet, instead, as a little sound, a ping in the great wide silent world, you make visible a sudden fluidity to the form, a splash of noise, but a carefully measured splash that's saved from preciosity by the fact that it comes from within the body's own borders, one voice, one small note extended, and then bent; the bending is everything, the volta, the turn, and also important is where it occurs within the sonnet's "scanty plot of ground," to quote old Wordsworth. From there the "little sound" sparks and then forms itself out of the dramatic contrasts of private light and darkness."

"Forget all that business about fourteen lines of rhymed iambic pentameter, think of Leonard and his sage wisdom: Art breathes from containment and suffers from freedom." Or the problems that accrue from the "weight of too much liberty" (Wordsworth). Down out the noise of rhyme and rhythm. Think only of the small dramatic argument that's being brought into being -- a handball court or a courtroom itself, hard, demanding thick stone walls -- between perseverance and its asymmetrical smash of opposition. [...] Or think of the shape of a human life, which, like it or not, is limited. [...] Every species has a probable life span, and this observation offers me a verification of sorts for my fourteen line creation."

"A sonnet [...] comes with its coat of varnish. As Flaubert says, the words are like hair; they shine with combing. We can do what we want with a sonnet. It is a container ever reusable, ever willing to refurbished, retouched, regilded and reobjectified."

Autumn is the best season in Canberra and the garden in our courtyard is in flower to reward James's efforts. How better to celebrate than lunch in the sunshine? Here James poses self-consciously before cooking the gourmet sausages.

Roses do well in Canberra. Australia's Old Parliament House has had rose gardens since Robert Broinowski began work on them in 1931, using public donations. The National Capital Authority (James's employer) has restored the Old Parliament House gardens with more than five thousand roses, once again sponsored by private donors.

James and I have sponsored a rose in my late mother's name (June McKinlay), and were assigned a Lady Mann rose. It's a hybrid tea rose bred in Australia in 1937, with dark foliage and strongly colored pink blooms. It is a recurrent flowerer with a strong fragrance, growing to about 1.8m. The Lady Mann rose has been planted in the Rex Hazlewood Rose Garden, located on the Senate side of the old building.

As tomorrow is Mothers' Day, after our lunch, James and I went to have look. The Rex Hazlewood Garden was first designed by Hazlewood, a rose specialist, 1931, at the request of the then National Rose Society of New South Wales. The replanted version will tell the history of the rose, displaying many old styles of roses. The very centre of centre of the garden features roses bred by internationally renowned Australian rose breeder Alister Clark. One of these is the Lady Mann.

Post script (October 2008) For a long time I was unsure as to who was the Lady Mann after whom the rose is named. Following a kind note from Trischa Mann, I learn that she was most likely Adeline Mary (neé Raleigh), Lady Mann (d. 1957), the the wife of Sir Frederick Wollaston Mann KCMG (1869-1958), Chief Justice (1935-44) and Lieutenant Governor of Victoria.

The rose was bred by Alister Clark (1864-1949), Australia's most prolific rose breeder, who lived and bred his roses in Bulla, near Melbourne, Victoria. (The Alister Clark Memorial Rose Garden in Bulla contains all 67 of the Alister Clark roses still available.) The Lady Mann rose was released around 1940, during Sir Frederick's term as Chief Justice. So it does seem likely that the Lady Mann rose was indeed named after Adeline!

Recently James and I saw two very different exhibitions at the National Gallery of Australia: Grace Cossington Smith: a retrospective and James Gleeson: beyond the screen of sight.

Cossington Smith, with Margaret Preston and Fred Williams, is among my favourite twentieth century Australian painters. She was, perhaps, Australia's pre-eminent post-impressionist. Cossington Smith a paradoxical figure; she lived a quiet, circumscribed life. Yet as an artist she was a brilliant pioneering modernist.

As a full retrospective, the show ranges from 1910 to 1971, the full span of her art career, and includes 135 paintings and drawings. It was simply glorious. Cossington Smith drew and painted many subjects, mainly in bright colors, in a manner that was daring and new for her day. Her drawing and perspective are superb, yet she often saw her subjects from an unconentional perspective. She was particularly interested in cityscapes and structures (she did a large series on the building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the 1930's) but also made many fine portraits and some pictures of Australian wildflowers. Later in life, she made an brightly colored series of interiors of her Sydney home, such as this one, Interior with wardrobe mirror, 1955. I recommend the NGA's permanent website of Grace Cossington Smith's works.

James Gleeson, AO, D.Litt, at age 89 is still working and is much esteemed as an elder statesman in Australian art. The exhibition (prepared by the National Gallery of Victoria) was impressive. Much of Gleeson's work is surrealist, which I barely understand and don't like especially. But the quality of the work was obvious even to the unschooled eye. Three paintings that caught my were Crucifixion (1952), National Gallery of Victoria; Italy (1951), Art Gallery of New South Wales; and A cloud of witnesses (1966) Queensland Art Gallery. Italy [at right] evokes, of course, the devastation to Italy's built environment and cultural heritage as a result of WWII. I find it most striking.

A considerable part of Gleeson's work is frankly homoerotic, but it is not in the least pornographic. Many of the works explore the subconscious; their meanings are just beyond conscious understanding. Nude men are seen in strange, colorful landscapes that perhaps suggest the realms of unconscious. They also suggest that despite clothes and buildings, we are very much naked in our environment, which we do not fully understand and which can be turbulent. Yet, there is a sense of serenity in Gleeson's later works.

I am in favour of the Australian War Memorial, here in Canberra, not so much because it is a memorial, but because it is an important museum, archive, gallery and cultural asset relating to Australia's all too frequent participation in warfare.

This year, the memorial is holding a number of events to highlight the 90th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings and the 60th anniversary of VE (Victory in Europe). There will a commemorative service on the anniversary day, 8 May. The program is disappointing as it differs little from the one that has been used at countless ANZAC Day and Remembrance Day ceremonies for years. The hymns are those used over and over and the prayer, which I've left out, uses non-inclusive language. Couldn't someone have been a bit more imaginative? Here's a summary.

Ceremonial arrivals of VIPs Welcome by the Director of the Australian War Memorial Hymn: Amazing grace Addresses by the Minister for Veterans' Affairs and the British High Commissioner Call to worship: prayer by Chaplain Presentation of the Russian Commemorative Medal to three Australians Wreathlaying by seven Australian representatives and diplomatic representatives of seventeen other nations The Ode and Response: "They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old . . . " The Last Post / One Minute's Silence /The Rouse Hymn: O God, our help in ages past National Anthem Mustang fly-over salute Thank you and farewell

Yes, we need to remember the sacrifice of those who gave everything. Australians do this on ANZAC Day (25 April) and Remembrance Day (11 November). But on 8 May, we could have used a more lively ceremony to celebrate not Victory in Europe, but Peace for Europe. There are many people of German descent in Australia and over a million of Italian descent. (See Gianfranco Cresciani. The Italians in Australia. Cambridge Univ Pr., 2003). It would have been very fine if they could have joined their fellow Australians to give thanks for peace.

James and I meet weekly with some church friends for 'MSM' -- meal, study and meditation. I find meditation the hardest part; somehow it doesn't suit my temperament. I need to mediate on something such as a familiar psalm or prayer.

Recently I have I discovered prayer beads to be helpful. In the 1980s, Revd. Lynn Bauman of the United States created a pattern for Anglican Prayer Beads which is now widely used. Prayer beads, or 'rosaries', have not been common among Anglicans, who are often uncomfortable with the Marian nature of the Roman Catholic rosary (I am definitely no Marian myself, though I respect that the scripture describes her a " as blessed among women" the mother of Jesus. Maybe we can pray for the 'faithful departed', Mary included, but we certainly cannot pray to them.) However, there is a growing interest in the tradition of contemplative prayer. ('Rosary' derives from the Latin word rosarium, a rose garland or rose garden.) There's no set pattern for use of the prayer beads, but their design and symbolism are well explained here by the Franciscans. The beads are not 'holy', they are simply a tool to aid prayer and keep the mind focused.

While still convalescent from illness, I often lie quietly in bed for a while before falling asleep. So I use the beads to help me fill my mind with pleasant, prayerful reflections. But praying in a darkened bedroom means that I either have to improvise as I go along (which is fine, but difficult when tired at the end of the day) or use some words that I have already memorised. So I devised this text based on a couple of very well known prayers from the Sunday church services, so that I can meditate on the words, without being distracted by the effort of recall.

	In the day	At night
At the cross:	Glory to God in the highest, and peace to God's people on earth. Lord God, heavenly King, almighty God and Father, we worship you, we give you thanks, we praise you for your glory.1	The Lord Almighty grant us a peaceful night and a perfect end. Amen.
	In the day and at night: at the invitatory bead:
	Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hidden: cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name, through Christ our Lord. Amen.2
	In the day and at night: at the cruciform bead before each 'week' or group of seven beads, this 'Trisagion':
	Holy God, holy and mighty, holy and imortal, have mercy on us.2
In the day and at night, for the 'weeks' - the seven beads between each cruciform bead:
First bead:	Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known,
Second bead:	and from whom no secrets are hidden:
Third bead:	cleanse the thoughts of my heart
Fourth bead:	by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit
Fifth bead:	that I may perfectly love you,
Sixth bead:	and worthily magnify your holy name
Seventh bead:	through Christ our Lord. Amen.
	In the day	At night
At the last cruciform bead:	Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the Father, Lord God, Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world: have mercy on us; you are seated at the right hand of the Father: receive our prayer. For you alone are the Holy One, you alone are the Lord, you alone are the Most High Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God the Father. Amen.1	In your mercy, Lord, dispel the darkness of night. Let this household so sleep in peace that at the dawn of the new day we may with joy waken in your name; through Christ our Lord.4

1. "Gloria in Excelsis", text agreed by the English Language Liturgical Consultation 1988.
2. A Prayer Book for Australia, 1998, p.119.
2. A Prayer Book for Australia, 1998, p.121.
4. An Australian Prayer Book, 1978, p.108.

Today at St. Philip's church, we celebrated the feast of St. Philip and St. James. I wrote a small pamphlet about him. It's not especially original; most of the information can be found here, here, and in Leon Morris's comentary on John.1 When I began to look for a depiction of St. Philip the Apostle, apart from a few icons of varying quality, I found little. Except, that is, this glorious engraving by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528). Made in 1526 (possibly earlier) and just 122mm by 76mm, is the fifth and last sheet of Dürer's unfinished series of Apostles. The handling is very bold and shows the skill due to the absolute command of the graver. The long sweeping lines which marked Dürer's earlier work reappear, especially in the background.

"Despite the brilliance of his paintings, he is the greatest master of woodcut and copper-engraving, achieving a technical mastery and range of expression never seen before or excelled since. [. . .] The influence of his prints was enormous; not only were they immediate and memorably dramatic in their narrative power, so that they astonish by their vivid imagery and layers of iconographic meaning; they were easily transported, cheap, and therefore readily available."2 The great white mantle of the engraving of St Philip so pleased Dürer that he used it again in his painted panels of Four Apostles in 1526.

The Four Holy Men. 1526.

Dürer's accomplishments included some magnificent paintings, portraits, and altarpieces. But his greatest achievement lay in his graphic work, his woodcuts, his engravings, and even some etchings, and in a large number of brilliant drawings. In addition, he wrote some of the earliest works in the German language dealing with human proportions and perspective, with the intention of providing a sound foundation for art.

In his own day, Dürer was a man of great fame. [. . .] For the centuries to come his fame seldom waned; his graphic work was collected, many of his figures imitated, and his books used as textbooks. He became famous almost overnight when he published his Apocalypse in 1498.

Dürer's breadth and depth of subject matter are truly unique. He depicts biblical stories, the lives of saints, historical events, fashion, elements of social life, classical mythology or allegory, animals, plants, heraldry, as well as making portraits, landscapes, fantastic ornamental borders, and even depictions of dreams. No other artist ever treated such a wide variety of subjects while at the same time introducing many innovations. [. . .]

[T]he fifteenth century had seen the introduction of naturalism, an attempt to respect reality as it was seen, and introducing depth and space. In Italy we call this the Renaissance. In the north its center was Flanders, the home of great Flemish artists like van Eyck and van der Weyden and other Flemish masters wrongly called "primitives." Dürer knew both streams, felt their influence, and in many ways even furthered their achievements.³

1. Leon Morris. The Gospel according to John. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971
2. P & L Murray The Oxford companion to Christian art and architecture, OUP, 1998, pp.146-147.
3. Dürer's Apocalypse: an artist's message to his contemporaries" in HR Rookmaaker The creative gift: essays on art and the Christian life. Westchester: Cornerstone, 1981 (A collection of essays published after Rookmaaker's death in 1977.)

The Anglican Church of Canada has a difficult decision on its hands.

The Council of General Synod (CoGS), the governing body of the Anglican Church of Canada between meetings of its General Synod, meets 6 to 8 May, and will decide on last February's request by the primates (national leaders) of the Anglican Communion that the Canadian church withdraw its members from the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) -- this in response to the 'Windsor Report' on current divisions related to homosexuality. If it decides to withdraw its members from the meeting, CoGS must also decide on the primates' invitation to appear at a "hearing" at the ACC "to set out the thinking behind their recent actions" in the Canadian church, and whether it will continue to fund the ACC.

Meeting recently, the bishops of the Anglican Church of Canada unanimously agreed "neither to encourage nor to initiate" the blessing of same-sex couples "until General Synod has made a decision on the matter" -- a statement that expresses the status quo. The statement met with approval from the Archbishop of Canterbury, who sent a message to the bishops.

The bishops also supported the commitment of the Canadian primate to his fellow international leaders to try to convince CoGS to agree to request that Canadian members be withdrawn from the ACC. However, the bishops did not recommend whether or not the Canadian church should withdraw, leaving the decision to the CoGS.

Meanwhile, on the other hand, the Anglican Church of Canada's Faith, Worship and Ministry Committee says that "existing ecclesiological and synodical structures, in dioceses and provinces and within the (Anglican) Communion, are being pre-empted" by the primates' recommendation. "Authority is being extended to bodies that goes beyond that constitutionally allocated to them,". The Committee called the primates' request "inappropriate" citing these reasons.

• The constitution of the ACC "states that questions of membership are initiated" by it.
• If the primates' request were granted "it would set a precedent for dealing with other issues."
• The Windsor Report, issued by the Lambeth Commission on Communion created to find ways of "seeking the highest communion possible" among churches at odds over homosexuality, has recommended that communication lines remain open.
• The Canadian Anglican church "is still in a process of discernment and is not at present of one mind" about matters of sexuality.

Similarly, its Ecojustice Committee, which considers social justice issues, also recommends that the Anglican Church of Canada continue as a full member of the ACC. It based its decision on the baptismal covenant and a "conviction that theological consensus is the fruit of communion, and not its pre-condition." In its report to CoGS, the Ecojustice Comiittee cites the Anglican Communion's Ten Principles of Partnership, which promote inter-dependence, transparency and meeting together. Bishop Michael Bedford-Jones, committee chair, noted that "Of all the bodies to be asked not to go to, (the ACC) is the only one that serves the whole Communion and that is composed of all orders of ministry."

Postscript: On 7 May, the Canadian Council of General Synod decided that the Anglican Church of Canada's members to the Anglican Consultative Council should attend a meeting next month but not participate in the council's deliberations. The text of the resolution it adopted is:

That this General Synod thank our Primate, The Most Reverend Andrew Hutchison, for using his best efforts to explain the reality of the Anglican Church of Canada to the Primates of the Anglican Communion, and to explain the Primates' Communiqué to the Anglican Church of Canada.
That the Council of General Synod affirm the membership of the Anglican Church of Canada in the Anglican Consultative Council with the expectation that the duly elected members attend but not participate in the June 2005 meeting of the Council.
That the Council of General Synod welcome the invitation to the Anglican Consultative Council in order to explain the current situation, the steps that were taken by the Dioceses of the Anglican Church of Canada and the General Synod and the underlying theological and biblical rationale with respect to the decision to bless committed same-sex unions.
That this Council ask the Primate, in consultation with the Windsor Report Response Task Group a) to formulate the presentation to be made to the Anglican Consultative Council at its meeting in June, 2005, as contemplated by paragraph 16 of the Communiqué and b) to name participants in the presentation in consultation with this Council.
This Council encourages the Primate to consider attending the Anglican Consultative Council meeting in June 2005, and to participate in the presentation contemplated by paragraph 14 of the Primates' Communiqué.

Sources: Anglican Journal here and here.
Anglican Church of Canada news item