Anglican Mainstream

Maria Eagle MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State in the Ministry of Justice and promoter of the new Equality Bill, recently gave a statement at the conference on Faith, Homophobia, Transphobia and Human Rights indicating that religious groups will be forced to employ homosexual youth workers and other staff not actively engaged in the issue of religious services. This is a dangerous move and, rather than decreasing homophobia, will increase both homophobia and ‘heterophobia’. It will almost definitely lead to a breach in a person’s human right to choice and self-actualisation.

 

As a professional youth worker who has been JNC qualified for over ten years, I have worked in the statutory, charity and religious fields. I now work as a counsellor and life coach, and in my work as both a youth worker and as a counsellor I have come across stories of people who have been forced into a homosexual lifestyle that they do not want. When I was training, at University College of St Martin in Lancaster (now the University of Cumbria) I was told by my youth work skills lecturer, a pioneer of glb youth groups in the country, the official local authority policy was that when someone came to you feeling that they may be lesbian or homosexual you got them into a gay/lesbian/bisexual youth group as soon as possible. This was seen then as the right thing to do. As someone who was involved with the gay lifestyle at the time, I recognised from my own experience that this was not always the best thing. Having since having had contact with local authorities in Manchester, London and a number of Counties in the South, I have discovered that even if this is not the written rule it is the verbal guideline. This is in part due to the propaganda from the gay community – that people are born gay, and once gay always gay – a viewpoint without scientific backing, and one that many gay activists such as Peter Tatchell, and the previous columnist of the London Paper ‘Gay Boy in the City’ acknowledge.

 

With the imposition of legislation that gives the potential to force gay and lesbian youth workers onto churches and other religious groups we are shutting down a needed debate to create a single level of homosexual acceptance – that of ‘gay is ok’. Yet, as I have stated, there is no scientific evidence for homosexuality being inborn. All the scientific evidence for a biological cause for homosexuality was examined by Dr David de Pomerai of the Institutes of Neuroscience and Genetics at Nottingham University and Dr Glynn Harrison, a psychiatrist at University of Bristol. They came up with a biological contribution to homosexual behaviour of 5%.  Francis Collins, the previous director of the Human Genome Project declared that there is no evidence that homosexuality is genetic. We also have nearly 100 years of clinical study , including the paper Sexual Behaviour and the Human Male by Alfred Kinsey, that supports the view of Peter Tatchell that sexuality is changeable. If religious bodies are forced to have homosexual youth workers then the potential for these issues to be debated will be weakened by the major non pro-gay voice being silenced.

 

I also have a more serious concern. This is that by shutting down the voice of concern which is religious bodies, we will be trapping people in a behaviour pattern that is unsuitable for them. Many people will see the concerns of those trapped in a homosexual lifestyle they do not want as internalised homophobia. This term is a strange one in that the evidence to support such a diagnosis is the belief of the client that they do not want to be gay. Yet there are no criteria in any diagnostic manual to allow any proper diagnosis to be made. Similarly there is no body of research, or documented clinical reports that show that therapy to help people accept their homosexuality either works or is safe. As seen by the recent report by Professor Michael King of University College, London, into therapists who are willing to help clients change, the standard doctrine is that of counselling to help people accept their sexuality.

 

Putting aside the issue of evidence, we then have the fact that if the client wishes to change and the counsellor or psychotherapist is not willing to help him or her, then the practitioner is in breach of the basic principle of such therapies – that counselling/psychotherapy be client led. Such practice is also in breach of clients’ human right to choose the path that suits them. If they choose to go through some form of therapy to help them change their sexual orientation they are not choosing a path that will lead to breach of another person’s freedom – to claim that they are because they are encouraging homophobia or are giving into internalised homophobia is akin to saying that paedophiles can have sex with a child of any age, as to stop them would be to breach their human rights to self expression, or that murder is ok as long as it is a right to self expression.

 

If religious bodies are forced to have practicing homosexuals in any form of pastoral position, which includes youth workers and can include personal assistants and other front line staff who can act as a public voice for that body, we are removing the right to opinion and the right for someone to choose. I agree totally that no body, religious or otherwise, must be allowed to encourage true homophobia – the irrational fear of homosexuals or lesbians – but neither must we encourage a society where homophobia is used as a term for anyone who disagrees with homosexuality as a lifestyle, who believes that science does not prove homosexuality, or that the sexuality of people can change. There is also the issue that this proposed legislation will discriminate against people who, because of their religious beliefs, believe that living a homosexual lifestyle is wrong and have chosen to be celibate – a group that is already ignored by the wider pro-gay community.

 

One of the most frightening stories I have experienced was being asked to meet and possibly help a young man, who I will call Adam. He was a biochemistry student at a leading university in the South of England. As a teenager he was worried that he was sexually attracted to men, and went to his youth worker to have a chat. His youth worker felt out of his depth and told Adam that he would arrange for him to see someone. The appointment was actually a meeting of the gay/lesbian/bisexual youth group that met in the town. Adam’s membership of his original youth group was transferred without his permission (or his parents’ knowledge) to the gay youth group. Adam was told that he was born gay and encouraged to embrace his sexuality. All was fine until Adam got to university. Whilst researching another topic, Adam came across old copies of scientific magazines which contained the original research into the gay gene and the gay brain by Dean Hamer, Simon Le Vay and others and the discussion around the evidence. He told me that as he read the research his world fell apart, as he realised that he had been lied to by the leader of his gay youth club and others. By then his parents had been told, and his father did not want to know him. Because Adam felt trapped in the gay lifestyle, and that this was the group who had lied to him, he started to get depressed. When he was sent to a psychiatrist about his depression, he was told that he was born gay (in spite of being able to produce the research that showed otherwise) and should just get on a live the lifestyle. I was asked to visit Adam by someone from a local church who was involved with regional hospital as a chaplain after Adam had self-harmed. I wish I could say that Adam’s story had a happy ending, but after release he took his own life with a drug overdose. The background was not reported in the local papers. This proposed legislation runs a severe risk of causing more Adams.

 

Recent research, presented to the Commission for Human Rights and Equality, shows that bullying towards people because of their religious faith – regardless of race – is a much more common occurrence that homophobic bullying, yet this proposed legislation could be seen as Governmental act of anti-religious bullying. It will remove Britain from a position of multi-culturalism to that where views held, however scientific or moral they are, will be policed against as they do not sit in with the culture of political correctness.

 

It is interesting to note that Maria Eagle is the twin sister of Angela Eagle, the first female Labour MP to enter into a civil partnership, and that Angela Eagle’s civil partner was one of the committee at the Faith, Homophobia, Transphobia and Human Rights Conference. As such, the timing of the announcement, by someone attempting to remove the protection from classification of homophobic hatred for religious debate such as the recent Sex in the City conference, and Church sermons, could be seen as a propaganda stunt if it were not for Maria Eagle’s track record on this issue, and her relationship to one of the committee.