There's No Pride in Bashing Gays, Bishop
THE TELEGRAPH: Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali's campaign against homosexuality worries George Pitcher.

If you're reading, Bishop Michael, I really didn't want to have another pop at you about your trenchant and sometimes bizarre views about what constitutes Christian truth. As to the rest of you reading this, I'm sorry if it looks as if whenever Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, who retires as Bishop of Rochester in September, makes a public statement I launch an attack on him. Believe me, the routine is tiresome for me, too.

But his comments in yesterday's Sunday Telegraph, which he is expected to repeat today, that homosexuals should "repent and be changed" cannot pass unchallenged. Or rather, they should not go challenged only by homosexual rights campaigners, such as Peter Tatchell, who you would expect to be somewhat antipathetic to the expressed view.

Because Dr Nazir-Ali is wrong in the eyes of a broad swath of kind and tolerant people of differing sexualities, social mores and of the Christian faith, other faiths and no faith at all. Badly, badly wrong.

I say that I didn't want to have another fight with him because such fights polarise Anglicans, and we're at our best when we're talking. I went to a private lunch recently, to which Dr Nazir-Ali was also invited. He didn't show. The seat next to me went empty. I do hope he didn't bottle it; it's important that religious leaders don't just inhabit comfort zones with friends who share their views.

Dr Nazir-Ali's friends are the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (Foca), who this week will try to get the Anglican schism over homosexuality going again, while denying that they are doing any such thing. Had he turned up to our lunch, I would have asked him why he and Foca are so convinced that they know the mind of God better than those who disagree with them and that their interpretation of scripture is with absolute certainty the one and only true one.

When I write about the Church and homosexuality, inevitably I receive messages that read simply "Romans 1:26-27" or "1 Corinthians 6:9", as if that settles something. We can argue scripture until we're at the pearly gates. But the essential difference between Dr Nazir-Ali and me is this: I accept, disappointing as I would find it in my fiery furnace, that he might be right. By contrast, he and his friends cannot accept that I might be right, claim that I can't be a proper Christian, and some of them go so far as to suggest that I'll burn in hell for all eternity.

And there's the real problem: it's an issue of intolerance. Anglicanism has long been characterised by a broad tolerance. But my tolerance of Dr Nazir-Ali and his friends, that they are Anglicans with whom I happen vehemently to disagree, doesn't seem to be reciprocated.

Dr Nazir-Ali is leaving his bishopric, it is said, to develop his ministry among persecuted Christians. That is admirable. Persecution of Christians is a very bad thing. But persecution of homosexuals is a pretty bad thing, too, as is persecution of any part of humanity, all of which he will agree is made in God's image. >>> George Pitcher | Monday, July 06, 2009

TELEGRAPH TV: Same-sex Marriage in Iowa

The Mormon Church Is Leading the Fight against Gay Marriage in California
ALTERNET: California's Prop. 8 has exploded into an expensive, extensive battle between religious conservatives and gay rights advocates.

REXBURG, IDAHO -- America's Family Community." That's the motto of this Mormon college town, displayed on street-side monuments and in tall letters on the movie-theater marquee. Apparently, it's a formula for success. Rexburg thrives on a burst of construction and population growth. More than 30,000 residents occupy a grid of wide, orderly streets, amid vast potato fields that unfurl toward the majestic Teton Peaks. Plenty of Rexburg parents, following the Mormon prescription for big families, have six or seven children. One guy tells me his next-door neighbors have 13 children, and a family on the other side has 16. The newly expanded hospital maternity unit is already crowded with new babies. If Rexburg is any indication, Mormons are taking over the world.

They certainly run this town. An estimated 97 percent of the locals belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- making Rexburg possibly the most Mormon of all towns. The brilliant white-stone 57,000-square-foot Mormon temple, opened eight months ago, looms on a hilltop, glowing day and night; intense floodlights make Mormon temples the brightest objects in the Western nights. The college that sprawls beside the temple -- Brigham Young University-Idaho -- now boasts an annual enrollment of 21,000 students, more than double what it had eight years ago.

Mormon mores -- some written into local laws -- permeate the community. Rexburg has no real saloon and no supply of hard liquor; only four restaurants are licensed to serve beer or wine. There is only one coffee shop, and it keeps up with the meager caffeine demand by brewing each cup individually. When I cruise town on a pleasant Saturday night in mid-September, the hottest action comes down in a bowling alley: Balls crash down all 16 lanes while the spinning pins and the bowlers' teeth glow even whiter under the ultraviolet lighting.

But something louder and bigger draws me to Rexburg: the religious culture wars, which heat up every election season. Prophets who run the Mormon Church -- the church president, his top counselors and a dozen top apostles, based in the headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah -- encourage all Mormons to be active in politics. The prophets are said to be relaying the word of God, and while they generally don't endorse candidates, they take stands on issues such as abortion and homosexuality. As a result, most Mormons vote very Republican. In the last presidential election, nearly 92 percent of the votes in Madison County (Rexburg is the county seat) went to George W. Bush -- securing Rexburg yet another title: the nation's most Republican town.

On the most critical issues, the Mormon prophets go all out, urging their followers to conduct targeted campaigns. That helps explain why, Thursday evenings in the downtown building of a health-products company owned by one of Idaho's richest Mormons, groups of Rexburg college students and townies get together. They're using the company's call center to make call after call to California voters, trying to persuade them to pass a ballot measure in the November election. It's titled Proposition 8 -- the California Marriage Protection Amendment -- and it aims to prevent gay and lesbian people from getting married in that state.

An eight-year battle led to Proposition 8. In 2000, with Mormon encouragement and campaign money, California voters passed a measure banning gay marriage. It blew up again last May, when the California Supreme Court justices narrowly ruled (four to three) that the ban violated the civil rights of gays and lesbians. The court likened it to the bans many states once had against interracial marriage, all of which were tossed out long ago. Now, Proposition 8 aims to overrule the California Supreme Court, by amending the state Constitution.

Many religious groups have jumped into the campaign; the Mormon Church takes the lead. In June, the church's top prophets commanded Mormons "to do all you can" to work for Proposition 8 and donate money to the campaign. Mormon leaders throughout California read the instructions to their congregations, which have more than 750,000 members. Word spread everywhere in the Mormon realm. In August, the prophets added pages of elaboration: "The Church has a single, undeviating standard of sexual morality: intimate relations are proper only between a husband and a wife united in bonds of matrimony. ... Any dilution of the traditional definition of marriage will further erode the already weakened stability of marriages and family generally ... with harmful consequences for society." Mormon volunteers, additionally inspired by special TV broadcasts beamed from the headquarters into their churches, go door-to-door in California for Proposition 8. In other states, they run phone banks and do whatever they can. Their effort is strongest in the West, because there are more Mormons in this region than anywhere else. Chad Reiser, a leader of the BYU-Idaho College Republican Club, says the phone banks are not an official club activity, but "we do try to get as many people involved as possible. Proposition 8 is a moral issue" related to church doctrine -- "something we believe is important to all people." >>> By Ray Ring, High Country News | October 22, 2008

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