THE outcry from religious leaders over the scheduled introduction of the controversial Sexual Orientation Regulations (SOR), which will prevent homosexuals from being discriminated against in the 'provision of goods and services', is growing. The regulations are set to come into force in the UK on 01/04/07, but a toughened-up version of the SOR legislation has already been fast-tracked in Northern Ireland and is due to come into force there on the 01/01/07, probably in an attempt to gage workability (NI seems to be a test-ground for contentious new laws these days).
On Monday Roman Catholic Archbishop Vincent Nichols waded into the fray with this pointed admonition: 'those who are elected to fashion our laws are not elected to be our moral tutors. They have no mandate or competence to be so.' His Grace added that government ministers are, 'engaged in an intense and at times aggressive reshaping of our moral framework.' But then, your Excellency, what else do you expect from such a shower of unrepentant socialists set on their self-ordained mission to transform (shh, who said disfigure?) Britain into a liberal wonderland where everybody can live in peace and plenty forevermore?
On Tuesday the Bishop of Rochester, the Right Reverend Michael Nazir-Ali, concurred with his colleague, stating, 'In the proposed regulations there is no clear exemption for religious belief, even though it is widely known that several of the faiths in this country will have serious difficulty. These regulations will certainly affect a great deal of charitable work done by churches and others.' Pastor Ade Amooba, of Christian Voice, South London, was even more explicit: 'Homosexuals are set at liberty to enjoy their way of life. Why does the government want to take away ours? We will shut down the youth clubs and welfare projects rather than obey these laws.'
We won't even ask what the Muslims and Jews think, but it'd be an understatement to say that they ain't happy.
So, all this upset simply so that homosexuals can claim the right to hold knitting mornings in the vestry and stay in B&Bs run by homophobes? Some commentators have suggested that the above reactions of these and other religious leaders to the proposed legislation - threatening to disband their charity networks and so forth - has been rather infantile, and that they should accept that society is a-changin' and simply abandon tenants that have been a central part of their faith for, oh, 2,000-years or so. But hasn't this ancient creed - including it's more orthodox branches - jumped through enough hoops already for the progressive milieu? Surely, in order to preserve what little integrity it still possesses true Christianity – and not the happy-clappy nonsense that abounds these days - must remain diametrically opposed to the practice of homosexuality, just as it should be opposed to abortion; surely anything else is just Christianity lite and its hippy practitioners are headed straight for the hot place with the rest of the infidels.
Over the last forty-or-so years ineffaceable damage has already been done to Christianity of all denominations in the name of modernisation, particularly to the CofE, to the extent that the general public no longer perceives it as a serious institution (although there are of course other, more complex, reasons for the present faithlessness of the British public). In her 2000 book C of E: The State It's In Monica Furlong outlines the scale of the collapse of Christianity: 'In the twenty years between 1980 and 2000 the Church of England suffered a 27 per cent decline in church membership. The Roman Catholic Church suffered a similar decline in the same period in mass attendance. Methodists, Baptists and others suffered decline too…' A BBC article reports that, 'In 2000, 60 per cent of the population claimed to belong to a specific religion with 55 per cent being Christian. However, half of all adults aged 18 and over who belonged to a religion have never attended a religious service.' But has essentially swapping the rigid morality of the King James Bible for the loose 'ideals' conjured up in Lennon's vapid Imagine made Britain a better country to live in? If you're a transgender, heroin-smoking socialist clown then the answer's going to be in the affirmative; but that's not the majority of us, is it? The lack of a rigid morality imposed on the populace at school, at home and from the pulpit might go someway to explaining the current immorality and lawlessness which besets the UK. So not only is Christianity fighting for its own life, but in this current battle it is also fighting for the preservation of a morality and way of life that most decent people still ascribe to.
Because the SOR will not just affect religious groups: the proposed legislation will make it illegal for anyone who provides goods, services, facilities and education et cetera to discriminate against somebody on the grounds of their sexual orientation. Naturally, business-wise many people will and do not discriminate anyway; a customer is, after all, a customer, but people should at least be given the option. This lack of choice could lead to some unpleasant situations and will, obviously, add to resentment about supposed preferential treatment.
The issue of most concern is that the regulations will oblige schools to teach homosexual education alongside and as equal to heterosexual education, a development that will affect and disturb many parents. Even if you accept that those of a homo- and bisexual orientation represent six percent of the overall UK population then the high profile already afforded these people by the mass media and our political elite is disproportionate to say the least. It goes without saying that if people feel the urge to engage in homosexual acts, that's entirely their choice; just as it is with people who feel the urge to 'get it on' with animals or get intimate with corpses – but I, and the majority of the British population, don't want to have it smeared in our, or our children's, faces 24/7. Even veteran homosexual rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, speaking in a Dispatches episode earlier this year, posited of homophobic views that, 'In a free and democratic society, we [homosexuals] sometimes have to put up with views we disagree with, we find offensive, perhaps even insulting, because that is the price of freedom'. People are fed up with this 'pink bombardment' and have been sorely provoked in the recent past when, for instance, the government abolished Section28 despite widespread condemnation. We Brits can be an intolerant bunch if pushed and repeated exposure to lifestyles which, to be frank, makes the majority of us want to regurgitate the contents of our stomach, is simply going to make us even more intolerant. If this tiresome circus carries on I'm emigrating to Poland .
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