Churches fear British hate crimes law could silence Christians

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Comments: 3

London, England, Nov 28, 2007 / 02:30 pm (CNA).- British churches have expressed concern that legislation punishing hate crimes based on sexual orientation could be used to silence Christian disapproval of certain sexual behaviors.

Both the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales and the Church of England have issued a memorandum concerning an amendment to the Public Order Act of 1986 that would make incitement to hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation an offense punishable by law.

"Christians engaged in teaching or preaching and those seeking to act in accord with Christian convictions in their daily lives need to be assured that the expression of strong opinions on marriage or sexuality will not be illegal," the memorandum says.

The churches pressed for maximum clarity about what the law permits and forbids. They feared the law would restrict opinions and forbid criticisms about sexual behavior and lifestyles.

Both churches affirmed the importance of protecting those vulnerable to attack on grounds of their sexual or gender identity. However, they pointed out that the present law already restricts “words, behaviour and display of written material which are intended to cause harassment, alarm or distress, or which occur in the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress."

The churches suggested legal safeguards to protect expressions of opinion directed against conduct, rather than opinions directed against persons themselves.

Comments: 3

Subscriber comments:

Published by: M. Lyons
Perth, Western Australia 11/29/2007 08:18 AM EST

Crime is different from sin. States makes laws that are legally binding. You break a law you commit a crime. Sin, on the other hand, is an act of disobedience to God's law. It is not a legal matter but a moral one, and therefore does not come under state jurisdiction. So if I, for instance, believe that something is morally wrong - a sin - it has nothing to do with anybody else - least of all a politician who has a different moral view.

Published by: Rory Flick
California, US 11/29/2007 12:02 AM EST

State sanctioned immorality.

Published by: geistesswiesenschaften
TEXAS 11/28/2007 07:52 PM EST

Amen brother! What we already know is that there is NO gay gene. It is a myth. It is a fact that it is a myth. And while specific areas of brain activity (and proportion) can correlate to a likeliness of interpretation, it determines neither behavior nor choice, neither is sexual attraction is geneticly inherited.

In contrast, what has been determined is that children adopted by homosexual parents are twice as likely to participate in a homosexual act than other children reared normally. They are also more than twice as likely to consider such behavior as normal and approved, natural to human behavior.

What is evident from these two accounts is that rhetoric has a large part is deciding what is natural to the human condition and what is not, while science and natural law have taken a back seat to the discussions in political offices.

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