Fr. Aleksandr Groves was ordained a priest by Bishop Irenei in London on the Feast of the Entry of the Mother of God, this past Sunday. A Twitter user used the occasion to attack Fr. Aleksandr, and to accuse him of being a homosexual, and also to attack ROCOR as a whole as somehow being pro-LGBTQP. This claim was made on the basis of an article in the Daily Telegraph from 2013, which referred to Fr. Aleksandr and his business partner as a "couple." Having been quoted by reporters about a half dozen times in
I have heard from Orthodox people from the who have said that in their corner of England, the Orthodox community is very small, and so if something like this were actually true, it would be known, but of course it is not true.
St. Paul warns us that we should not receive an accusation against a presbyter, except from at least two or three witnesses ( 1 Timothy 5:19 ). So obviously, any Orthodox Christian that may have had questions raised by this article should have made some effort to find out if it was true before spreading it on Twitter for all the world to see.