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News Watch
Welcome to this
issue’s news review with
Andy
Armitage, who takes a look at two
particular stories that have caught his
interest.
As always, if
there’s anything you think we should know
about or include, please
email us.
Repent ye, and
believe the Gospel
We normally think of
Evangelicals and Catholics as being the
Christians most likely to be nasty towards
homosexuals, but the good old Church of
England should not be dismissed lightly.
And recent activity will
lay to rest any notions among those who
think the Anglican Church and the LGBT
community are in any way “on the same side”
that there will be any kissing and making up
very soon.
The mainstream Church of
England has demonstrated, anyway, that gay
people are not welcome. Well, they adopt the
usual hate-the-sin-but-love-the-sinner
approach, but that’s just a handy way of
covering their backsides that a politician
would be proud of.
Members of this
institution have shown the extent of their
unpleasantness and sheer spitefulness this
summer with the formation of the
Anglo-Catholic breakaway group Fellowship of
Confessing Anglicans (FCA).
Bigots’
alternative
It’s led by one Michael
Nazir-Ali, arch gay hater and a leading
light in last year’s GAFCON, or Global
Anglican Future, which was seen as a bigots’
alternative to the Lambeth Conference, the
Anglican Communion’s ten-yearly knees-up at
which they discuss things of such importance
in a rapidly changing world that they can
hold it – well, every ten years!
Nazir-Ali, Bishop of
Rochester in the UK, told the Sunday
Telegraph recently that gay people
should “repent and be changed”. This
is the kind of nastiness gays in the church
are up against.
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Michael Nazir-Ali:
gays should “be
changed” |
He tells the paper, “We
want to uphold the traditional teaching of
the Bible. We believe that God has revealed
his purpose about how we are made.
“People
who depart from this don’t share the same
faith. They are acting in a way that is not
normative according to what God has revealed
in the Bible.
“We welcome homosexuals” (yeah, right)
“The
Bible’s teaching shows that marriage is
between a man and a woman. That is the way
to express our sexual nature.
“We
welcome homosexuals, we don’t want to
exclude people, but we want them to repent
and be changed.”
It is preposterous to
talk of repenting for something that is
clearly not harming anyone, and outrageous,
illogical and laughable to imagine that gay
people can “be changed”, any more than Mr
Nazir-Ali can be changed into a frog.
GAFCON, leading to
something called the Jerusalem Declaration
(see “Related links” box below), which was
very much to do with Bible authority, was in
protest at the fact that the Episcopal
Church in the USA have – horror! – admitted
an openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson a
few years ago.
The new FCA, it is being
said, will split the Anglican Communion.
Open to gay
men and lesbians
But this possibility was
soon writ large, when the American
Episcopalians decided to tell the rest of
the Communion to go to blazes, and declared
that it would end its moratorium on blessing
same-sex couples and admitting gay priests.
In a move that the New
York Times said was likely to send shock
waves through the Anglican Communion, the
Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops voted
that “any ordained ministry” was open to gay
men lesbians.
Oh, the headline,
Repent ye, and believe the Gospel, by the
way, is from Mark 1:15. But you knew that
already.
Is this
Liberty?
Let’s get away from
matters religious for a moment, and look at
a more recent item of news concerning one of
Britain’s oldest gay campaigning
organisations, the venerable Campaign for
Homosexual Equality (CHE).
This won’t cause as much
excitement in the media as stories about
prelates, priests and poofs, but it’s
important nonetheless to those who value
freedom of expression.
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Rainbow flag (CHE) |
CHE has been given the
heave-ho from the civil-liberties
campaigning group Liberty, and it thinks it
knows why.
It was, according to the
online Pink News, “allegedly over a
motion which called for a time limit on
reporting child sex abuse”. Its story goes
on:
The gay rights group,
which celebrates its 40th anniversary
this year, was informed in April that
its affiliation with Liberty would be
terminated.
A letter from Liberty
director of operations Raj Chandarana
said that “significant” concerns had
been raised about CHE and the
“appropriateness of continued
affiliation to Liberty”.
The letter cited
issues around “the nature and size of
the CHE membership, governance
structures, constitution, electoral
process, policy-making process,
financial transparency, recent issues
and commitment to the objectives of
Liberty”.
It added: “In
particular, your motion on child sex
abuse is also clearly contrary to the
objectives of Liberty, as listed in
Article 2 of Liberty’s constitution.”
The contentious
motion read: “We urge the government to
introduce a Statute of Limitation which
would debar any criminal prosecution in
respect of alleged child abuse unless
the matter was brought to the attention
of the police within five years of the
complainant reaching the age of
majority.”
CHE says that, in cases
of what it calls “historic abuse”, evidence
or acknowledgment of an accused man’s being
gay can damage his chances of acquittal due
to homophobia and confusion between
homosexuality and paedophilia.
Old pervs
The organisation’s life
president, Allan Horsfall, wrote in its
latest annual report, “It is now beyond
dispute that a proportion of historical
abuse cases result from false allegations
that are driven by the prospect of handsome
compensation awards.”
“Perhaps this is
something Liberty is afraid of
acknowledging,” I conjectured on the Pink
Triangle blog. “After all, the slightest
suggestion of underage sex will get them
twitching and thinking of old pervs abusing
small children. Perhaps they believe that
someone who is accused of having had
consensual sexual contact, years ago, with
someone just below the age of consent at the
time ought to be pursued to the grave, never
forgiven, never understood, never be
considered to have maybe been innocent of
the charge.”
I may be wrong, but it
looks decidedly dodgy. Horsfall told Pink
News, “If Liberty didn’t like [the
motion], they should have let it go forward
to debate. It’s almost impossible to
discuss.
“They just said, ‘We’re
going to cancel your affiliation.’ They
haven’t said the reason but we’re sure this
is the reason.”
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Ray Gosling
(left) and Allan Horsfall |
For years now, Horsfall
and a CHE vice-president, the broadcaster
Ray Gosling, have been running something
called Gay Monitor, which, according to its
website, has for 10 years been “watching
court cases that involve male gay sex. Often
we’ve befriended. Some cases have been very
distressing. Of course there have been a lot
of different kinds of cases.
Idiosyncratic
“But one theme has
cropped up again and again – this is
historical abuse.”
I think Gosling and
Horsfall are two men who know what they’re
talking about. Gosling – in his
idiosyncratic style – cites a recent case
here.
Incidentally, Gosling
had pride of place on BBC Four recently. See
more in our “Airings” feature
here.
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