Motherfuckery

For this entry I'm going to get up on my soapbox for a bit. I apologise, but frankly this behaviour needs to be accounted for.

This is an article published in the Church of England Newspaper. I don't know whether this actually represents the Church's views, or is independent from it, but as you'll notice, the author - Alan Craig - compares several leading gay rights activists to Nazis. Yes, you are reading this correctly; indeed, he makes a lot of comparisons between LGBT people trying to get equal rights in their country with Hitler's lebensraum campaign. We get references to the Sudetenland and everything!

As Nazi analogies go, it's at least dedicated. That still doesn't stop it from being hilariously and horribly wrong, but you can't deny Craig loves a metaphor.

Now, the Church of England is the official Christian church of the UK, and is part of the world's largest religion. If you are in that secure a position of power, you are in no way entitled to complain that a minority is getting on your nerves and "threatening your religious freedom". You have to take your lumps with a grin. I say this with the authority of a Caucasian, heterosexual middle-class male, the core demographic for taking lumps with a grin. This whole article smacks of hysterical self-pity, and it's important to note it's published at a time where the government is considering legalising gay marriage.

It's around the time of this, a major social change, that the fearful and the paranoid, afraid that they'll be rendered second-class citizens and forced to groom unicorns for their new gay overlords, launch out an assault of muck-spreading in a sort of desperate last-minute grunt and spew. Many have claimed that this will - in the words of Andrea Williams, head of the Christian concern organisation - "see churchmen...being dragged through the courts for refusing to marry homosexuals and sanction their behaviour". Even though the government has made it clear that they will not force church ministers to marry gay couples. 

And you know what? They have the right to do so. You don't have to do anything against your faith, so long as you don't hurt anybody. One vicar who declines to marry a gay couple won't be the be-all end-all for two men or two women wanting to be married; they'll just go find another one. But this irrational fear of LGBT individuals means that the truth gets distorted. It's blurred in an attempt to court public behaviour. And hiding the truth, distorting the truth, outright lying - that can't pass.

This article was brought to my attention over Twitter by Patrick Strudwick, a gay rights activist who particularly protests gay conversion therapy, or "praying the gay away" as it's sometimes known. Leaving aside the ethical dilemma of involving religion in a clinical process, conversion has been proven to not work, being little more than repression, and indeed, many people undergoing this feel worse than when they started, particularly since homosexuality hasn't been considered a psychiatric disorder since 1973. You might as well get therapy to sort out your eye colour. Strudwick notably infiltrated a therapy group that was "curing" men of homosexual desires, and although it was for journalistic purposes, he still found himself questioning why he found men attractive: "The therapists planted doubt and worry where there was none".

So I want you all to do a favour for your good ol' pal Jack. I want you to go to that article (skip past any comments not made my Adrian or the admin, it will just make you cry) and leave comments refuting his claims. Be civil - don't act rude or hateful in the comments, that's what we have the Daily Mail for. Feel free to mention your sexuality or your beliefs if you so wish. Just let Alan Craig know this kind of behaviour is simply not on.