Skip to main content

No Comment Needed

Thought for the Day, 12 January 2007

The Rev. Dr Giles Fraser


The Rev Dr Giles Fraser is the vicar of Putney and lecturer in philosophy at Wadham College, Oxford. giles.fraser@parishofputney.co.uk

As a Christian I'm protected by the law against discrimination - and I'm grateful for it. No one can legally deny me access to goods and services because of my faith. No one is allowed to put a sign up in their hotel window that reads 'No Christians' - or 'No Muslims' for that matter. Discrimination on the grounds of race and gender is equally outlawed. All of which is an unambiguously good thing. As indeed, I believe, is the extension of these provisions to include sexual orientation. For no one should be allowed to display a sign that reads 'no gays' either.

Some Christians, however, are strongly resisting this legislation. They argue that being obliged to provide goods and services to gay couples makes them complicit in what they regard as sin, and that this complicity compromises their deeply held religious convictions.

For some, however, these so-called 'religious convictions' are little more than a mask for prejudice. Why, they argue, aren't these same Christian hoteliers up in arms at a legal obligation to provide hotel rooms for unmarried couples? After all, conservative Christians believe sex outside marriage to be equally a sin, yet they haven't been protesting about this. Indeed, many of them may well believe gluttony is a sin, but they haven't been campaigning for Christian waiters to have the right to refuse fat people extra chips on moral grounds.

No, there is real inconsistency in the way some Christians apply the argument from complicity. Moreover, this inconsistency is indicative that they are treating homosexuality as a special case. In other words, this inconsistency is a tell-tale mark of prejudice.

And the sad truth is, there'd be little need for this sort of legislation if there wasn't so much prejudice about - both in the church and elsewhere. Indeed, it's worth saying that discrimination doesn't only shelter behind religious belief. There's prejudice outside the churches and mosques too. For the idea that this is an argument between Christian prejudice and secular enlightenment is a lazy media distortion that likes its arguments simple and binary.

Within the church there is real debate and much disagreement. Many Christians don't think homosexuality is a sin in the first place. In fact, I believe it a God-given gift - sure, it's a gift that can be abused like any other - but often it's a channel of grace, a means by which some human beings show love and commitment and hospitality, just like anybody else.

There's a hymn we often sing in church that goes like this:

For the love of God is broader than the measure of man's mind
And the heart of the eternal is most wonderfully kind
But we make his love too narrow with false limits of our own
And we magnify his strictness with a zeal he will not own.


Further reading:
* Faith groups are misrepresenting sexual equality rules, say critics, Ekklesia.
* Anti-gay rights activists do not represent most religious opinion, say critics, Ekklesia.

Previous Posts:
* Christians: "Get Over It and Get On With It"
* Further "Christian" Attacks
* Sexual Orientation Regulations - The Demo
* Anti-Freedom Demo Today Outside Parliament
* Sexual Orientation Regulations, Letter To Ruth Kelly
* Sexual Orientation Regulations, The Saga Continues
* Anti-Gay Christians Strike Again - Part 2
* Anti-Gay Christians Strike Again


Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Short History of the Elephant and Castle and Its Name

Last night I attended a lecture by local historian Stephen Humphrey who discussed the general history of the Elephant & Castle, focussing more particularly on what he called its heyday (between 1850 and 1940). This is part of a week-long art project ( The Elephant Project ) hosted in an empty unit on the first floor of the infamous shopping centre, aiming to chart some of the changes currently happening to the area. When an historian starts talking about the Elephant and Castle, there is one subject he can not possibly avoid, even if he wanted to. Indeed my unsuspecting announcement on Facebook that I was attending such talk prompted a few people to ask the dreaded question: Where does the name of the area come from, for realz? Panoramic view of the Elephant and Castle around 1960/61. Those of us less badly informed than the rest have long discarded the theory that the name comes from the linguistic deformation of "Infanta de Castille", a name which would have become at

Rev. Peter Mullen's Blog

Rev. Peter Mullen is the chaplain to the London Stock Exchange and the rector of St Michael's Cornhill and St Sepulchre without Newgate in the City. Rev. Peter Mullen was also until recently a blogger. Sadly the result of his cyber labour seem to have been deleted but Google has thankfully cached some of it and I have saved a copy for posterity, just in case. The deletion of Rev. Mullen's writings might just have something to do with the fact that last week, the Evening Standard and then the Daily Mail published an article (the same article actually) about some of those very writings (even though the elements of said writings being quoted had been published in June this year, at the time of the blessing ceremony which took place between two members of the Church of England in St Bartholomew the Great - picture ). In the article, we learned what the Rev. thinks about gay people and what should be done to them: We ["Religious believers"] disapprove of homosexuality

Liam Messam and Tamati Ellison Swap Jerseys

I am having a bit of a vacuous evening looking at images of pretty rugby players. Addidas, with its latest viral campaign, Jersey Swap , seems to be squarely aiming at the gay market with a selection of five antipodean rugby players, visitor to the website can select and see take their tops off and... well... swap jersey (those interested can create posters too). My favorites of the bunch are Liam Messam and Tamati Ellison . The pictures of their pretty faces and bulging naked torsos (excuse me while I sit down for a second!) included to this post should tell you why. A job well done for Addidas. This will go round the Internet for a while, I think.