.- Religious leaders and pro-family advocates in the United Kingdom are concerned that the new prime minister’s promise to advance homosexual rights at home and abroad will jeopardize protections for freedom of speech and religious expression.
Fr. Timothy Finigan told LifeSiteNews.com that Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s assurances that he would continue to promote the homosexual political agenda are an indication of how closely the Labour Party is following homosexual efforts to outlaw all opposition, particularly religious opposition in schools. Fr. Finigan is a Catholic theology professor and founder of the Association of Priests for the Gospel of Life.
Brown recently told the homosexual online news center PinkNews that his government would continue to promote the homosexual political agenda and praised the work of the Labour party in this regard to date.
"I think this government has made a huge amount of progress: for example, we've equalized the age of consent, repealed Section 28 [that banned promotion of homosexuality ‘as a pretended family relationship’ in schools], and made it illegal to discriminate on grounds of sexual orientation," Brown wrote on PinkNews.
He promised that his government would work to advance human rights worldwide, including the universal decriminalization of homosexuality.
Brown also promised that the newly established Commission for Equality and Human Rights would be employed to change attitudes toward homosexuality and to ensure "anti-discrimination laws are enforced." One of the important areas left, he said, is to "tackle homophobic bullying in schools," the next goal identified by the hugely successful homosexual lobby group Stonewall.
Fr. Finigan told LifeSiteNews.com that “homophobic bullying” refers to not allowing schools to promote natural marriage and the family as normative.
All human rights organizations, Fr. Finigan said, now work on the principle that homosexuality is the equivalent of race, with homosexual sex being the "racial" characteristic that defines the homosexual person. To criticize this activity as sinful, therefore, becomes discrimination.
Given this principle, it is likely that the government's new commission will be used to stifle moral opposition to homosexual activity, especially in religious schools, said Fr. Finigan.
