Anglican Mainstream

By Darren McCaffrey, Sky News Reporter

Welsh Secretary David Jones is attacked over claims same-sex partners cannot provide a suitable environment for raising children.

Welsh Secretary David Jones has provoked criticism after saying that same-sex partners could not provide a "warm and safe environment" to raise children.

The Conservative MP made the remarks when asked on ITV Wales' Face To Face programme about the Government's plans to introduce gay marriage, which he voted against.

He said: "I regard marriage as an institution that has developed over many centuries, essentially for the provision of a warm and safe environment for the upbringing of children, which is clearly something that two same-sex partners can't do."

The Prime Minister's spokesperson responded by saying David Cameron rejects Mr Jones' claims about children in same-sex families and that he is in favour of same-sex adoption.

"The Prime Minister believes gay families can provide warm and safe environment for raising children," the spokesperson said.

The shadow Welsh secretary, Owen Smith, claimed the comments proved that "nasty party is alive and well under David Cameron".

He said: "David Jones' comments are profoundly offensive and he should apologise immediately."

Equality campaigning group Stonewall have also attacked the Welsh Secretary's comments as "offensive and inaccurate".

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By Stephen Glover, Mailonline

Then I heard a Tory MP whom I hadn’t heard of speak in the Commons debate on Tuesday. David Burrowes, a leading opponent of gay marriage, described how he had been called a Nazi and a bigot and subjected to death threats because of his views. His children had been told that their father is a bigot and a homophobe.
 
I thought of Polly Toynbee, and her ‘nest of bigots’. What nasty, intolerant language to use. The language of a bigot, in fact. I asked myself whether anyone I knew, or had heard, spoke about the supporters of gay marriage in such terms. I couldn’t think of any.

Then I took another look at the YouGov poll so freely cited by the BBC. It’s true that 56 per cent of respondents said that they were in favour of gay marriage, but there were 38 per cent against. That’s a substantial minority, and perhaps the figures would be different if the question were asked in a different way.

For example, a ComRes poll commissioned by a group called the Coalition for Marriage asked whether ‘marriage should continue to be defined as a lifelong commitment between a man and a woman’. This poll found 53 per cent in favour of this proposition and 36 per cent opposed.

I wonder how often this poll was mentioned by the BBC. I’ve heard no reference to it. To a large extent, the question frames the answer. YouGov put it one way, ComRes another.

My guess — no, it is closer to a conviction — is that only very few people are passionately in favour of gay marriage. Indeed, the YouGov survey found that only seven per cent of voters rate the issue as one of their most important concerns.

Moreover, the British are polite and tolerant people, unwilling to erect barriers against their fellow citizens. They are also terrified of being branded as ‘homophobic’, which has joined ‘racist’ and ‘Nazi’ in the lexicon of things that none of us wants to be.

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By Tim Montgomerie, Conservative Home

by Alistair Thompson, The Commentator

The Rotherham Council/UKIP case is just another symptom of the intolerance and contempt displayed by the politically correct towards ordinary people

On Saturday we learnt that two foster carers from Rotherham had the three children they were looking after removed – their crime, membership of the UK Independence Party.

But as our political leaders scrambled to denounce this latest incident as a "one off" the sad truth is that it is anything but. Indeed these cases are occurring with an alarming regularity and show that Britain has become a less tolerant country. What is more, the fingerprints of Messers Cameron, Clegg, and Miliband are clearly visible.

Less than two years ago the PM branded UKIP members “fruitcakes, loonies, and closet racists”. The clear implication is that UKIP is no better than far-right groups like the British National Party (BNP), or English Defence League (EDL).

Is it any wonder that social workers, who have had years of state-backed equality training and indoctrination, think they can act with impunity against UKIP supporters, since, just like the PM, they see them as swivel-eyed head bangers, not fit to be parents?

But this is just the latest example of the establishment's increasing intolerance.

Just a fortnight ago former housing manager Adrian Smith, from Trafford, had to take his employers, the Trafford Housing Trust, to the High Court for breach of contract. Mr. Smith, who had been demoted and had his wages docked by 40 percent for posting a comment on his private Facebook about the government's plans – saying he thought gay marriage in churches was an "equality too far" – won his case. Despite winning, and being awarded ‘token’ damages, the Trust has made clear that they will not reinstate Mr. Smith to his former role.

Despite Mr. Smith’s legal victory, the Trafford Housing Trust feels that his demotion on the basis of what he describes as “his Christian faith and views” is and was justified.

Where was the political outcry over this case? Has the PM issued a statement on Mr. Smith’s case? No.

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By Edwin Meese, Heritage Foundation

As summer faded to fall, a Chicago alderman’s fury toward Chick-fil-A finally seemed to be cooling. But fall is fickle in the windy city, and Proco Joe Moreno once again is threatening to stall the chicken chain from opening in his ward.

By Maggie Gallagher, National Review Online

If your job is to promote diversity, signing a petition to get a referendum on overturning Maryland’s gay marriage law on the ballot is bound to be controversial. But that’s exactly what Dr. Angela McCaskill, Gallaudet University’s Chief Diversity Officer, did in July. Now the resulting furor, first reported at Planet Deafqueer, has resulted in McCaskill being put on paid administrative leave today.

 

“Dr. McCaskill has participated in a legislative initiative that some feel is inappropriate for an individual serving as Chief Diversity Officer,” Gallaudet University President T. Alan Hurwitz said in a statement. “However, other individuals feel differently.”

 

According to the statement, Hurwitz will use McCaskill’s leave to determine her future at Gallaudet. An interim Chief Diversity Officer is expected to be appointed.

 

McCaskill didn’t respond to a request for comment. According to her university biography, she was the first black deaf woman to receive a PhD from the school.

by Zac Alstin, MercatorNet

In discussing same-sex issues, let's scrap the labels and return to facts.

According to the United States Centre for Disease Control (CDC), as of 2009, men who have sex with men (MSM) accounted for approximately 2 percent of the US population, but 56 percent of people living with HIV. This same demographic suffered 61 percent of all new HIV infections that year.

The CDC uses the concept of MSM because actions speak louder than words: actual behaviour is a better predictor of disease risk than self-identification. But even though actions speak louder than words, words are much easier to interpret. In fact, words are too easy to interpret, and in our contemporary verbal glut we are at risk of losing touch with the meaning embodied in real actions and real objects.

Here’s the problem: the CDC uses the term “MSM”, and we discover to our surprise that we don’t really know how to interpret such a concept. If only they’d said “gay men”, we could all slide neatly into our prejudices. MSM is a fact; “homosexuality” is an idea, an interpretation, an ideology, a historical movement, and a rallying point in the culture war. Does MSM equal homosexuality? Some would answer “yes”, others “no”, and thus we are back in the realm of interpretation.

If we are going to be intellectually honest, we should try to capture the truth beneath mere interpretation and prejudice. But escaping from an established framework is hard work. Some people frame the debate over same-sex marriage as an attack on traditional values by a gay lobby intent on normalising and gaining public affirmation for their lifestyle choices. Other people frame the debate as a homophobic bulldozer of religious conviction crushing the basic human rights of a long-victimised minority.

How can we reach the truth?

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From Christian Concern

From Conservative Home

By Michael Cook, MercatorNet

By Tim Stanley, Telegraph

By Tradition Family Property

How Same-sex “Marriage” Advocates use Violence Against Traditional Marriage Supporters

In this newly released video, volunteers with the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) describe how they were violently assaulted by pro-homosexual “marriage” advocates while promoting traditional marriage on college campuses and in the public square.

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By Ben Johnson, LifeSite News

The group that allegedly smashed up a Portland church hopes its “small act of vengeance will strike fear into the hearts of” Christian leaders who teach traditional sexual morality, according to an e-mail message the group released to the public.

Churches are a major contributor to the culture that deems trans women of color to be disposable, as not worth keeping alive,” the statement read.

By Andrew Carey, CEN

It is shameful that the appointment of Nicholas Holtam as Bishop of Salisbury didn’t inspire the same sort of reaction as the 2003 fiasco over Jeffrey John. It was known that Holtam is a man of radically liberal views and so it has proved.

To the Cutting Edge Consortium he gave a speech at the weekend, ‘Making Space for an Honest Conversation’. In it he elevated innovative and marginal Christian support for homosexuality to the level of tried and tested traditional and Biblical views on marriage held by the vast majority of churches and Christians.

Furthermore, like many liberals, his views turn out to be illiberal. To take one example he condemns the church’s exemptions from equality legislation. The only presumption can be that if he had his way, the churches would be compelled to marry homosexuals under equality legislation if gay marriage is enacted.

Is it too much to ask of liberal Anglicans that they defend the right of other Christians to their conscience and convictions and allow these controversial matters to be decided by theological debate rather than compulsion and coercion?

From The Christian Institute

The campaign to redefine marriage is being pushed by an “increasingly cavalier and triumphalist liberalism”, a gay commentator writing for the Irish Times has said.

Richard Waghorne, a freelance journalist, warned that switching the focus of marriage from children to adults would disadvantage “future generations”.

He objects to the way it is assumed that all gay people are in favour of gay marriage, and says that gay people have a variety of views.
 
Mr Waghorne, who is a homosexual, commented: “In considering gay marriage, it is essential to see treating different situations differently in no way constitutes discrimination.

“What is more fundamental here is the co-option of human rights language by an increasingly hegemonic strain of intolerant liberalism.

“Whereas the ‘right to marriage’ as pertaining to couples of the same sex is a recent invention, the right of a child to both a mother and a father where possible is not.”

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From Cranmer

Dr Alan Clifford has been renting the Eaton Park Community Centre, a council-run building in Norwich, for his church’s services of worship for nigh on 20 years. There has never been a problem. His church has also held a weekly outreach bookstall for the past four years on the council-owned Hay Hill site. There has never been a problem.

Until now.

Following a single complaint (yes, just one; that’s all it takes) that the church’s pastor, Dr Clifford, is producing ‘hate-motivated’ literature against Islam, the Norwich Reformed Church has been banned from both the Community Centre and Hay Hill. Norfolk Police have confirmed that no crime has been committed, but the Council has banned the church regardless for ‘equality’ reasons.

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From TFP Student Action

“If I ever see this girl, I will kill her. That’s a promise.”

Wake up America. The voices that preach tolerance are turning violent. This time the target is an innocent young girl, Sarah Crank, who testified before the Maryland Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee in support of traditional marriage.

The calm, truthful testimony of a 14-year-old minor – without profanity or harsh language – generated vulgar attacks, threats of violence and even death wishes divulged on numerous pro-homosexual websites, blogs, and comment entries. In fact, pro-homosexual activists unleashed a campaign of harassment against the Maryland family, including a call to have the mother’s parental rights revoked for simply encouraging her daughter to defend the reality of marriage between one man and one woman.

Violent Reactions

“And now everyone knows her name, so hopefully she will feel what its like to be harassed and bullied…” reads a comment posted on LGBTNation.com

From YouTube: “My god I hate people like this. Most (not all) Americans are [expletive] retards. If I ever see this girl, I will kill her. That’s a promise.”

Other entries: “Her parents should be exterminated.”

“The [sic] is why abortion must stay legal – to prevent little bigots like this from being Born…”

“Kill this child and his [sic] parent, for my 11 birthday would be a wonderful gift, thanks.”

“Her belief is hurting other people. I will attack her as much as I please.”

“Parents like hers should be sterilized…”

“I’m gonna kill ‘er!”

That is only a small sample. The vitriolic tone of over 2,600 comments posted on The Huffington Post alone, reveal how the “tolerance” promoted by the homosexual movement is anything but tolerant, nothing more than an empty slogan to silence most Americans. In fact, hundreds of additional comments posted across the blogosphere demonstrate just how willing pro-homosexual activists are to deny traditional marriage supporters their freedom of speech. 

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By Mark Steyn, National Review

As Senator Obama said during the 2008 campaign, words matter. Modern “liberalism” is strikingly illiberal; the high priests of “tolerance” are increasingly intolerant of even the mildest dissent; and those who profess to “celebrate diversity” coerce ever more ruthlessly a narrow homogeneity. Thus, the Obama administration’s insistence that Catholic institutions must be compelled to provide free contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients. This has less to do with any utilitarian benefit a condomless janitor at a Catholic school might derive from Obamacare, and more to do with the liberal muscle of Big Tolerance enforcing one-size-fits-all diversity.

The bigger the Big Government, the smaller everything else: In Sweden, expressing a moral objection to homosexuality is illegal, even on religious grounds, even in church, and a pastor minded to cite the more robust verses of Leviticus would risk four years in jail. In Canada, the courts rule that Catholic schools must allow gay students to take their same-sex dates to the prom. The secular state’s Bureau of Compliance is merciless to apostates to a degree even your fire-breathing imams might marvel at.

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By Megan Moore, Conservative Home

The Archbishop of York's comments on gay marriage in the Telegraph are not only entirely unremarkable for an Anglican priest, but also wholly inoffensive for anyone possessing of an open mind. Facebook and Twitter, however, have once again conspired to ensure that nothing in this world can ever again pass as unremarkable or inoffensive. By defending the Christian teaching on the nature of marriage, while acknowledging the value of committed gay relationships in civil partnerships, the Archbishop has shown himself to be the perfect mix of principle and pluralism: staying true to his beliefs, while accepting that others, for wholly good and decent reasons, may disagree. His opponents, however, have done him no such service.

The general consensus on the Archbishop's remarks can be summed up in one word: 'bigot'. This is the word I see used again and again, in Tweets, blogs and Facebook statuses, by those in my party in favour of gay marriage to describe not only John Sentamu, but indeed anyone else who opposes gay marriage. For people who, in their support of what they see as gay equality, presumably pride themselves on their enlightened and tolerant attitudes, the Archbishop's critics seem oddly quick to denounce – in vicious and ad hominem terms – a kind and principled man who happens to disagree with them.

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