To: letters@newsletter.co.uk
Subject: Outrageous Claims
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2012 04:13:43 +0000
“Our claims of what would be the consequences of change have been more than realised,” the two clergymen ringingly assert. Which consequences would that be, precisely, gentlemen?
The main consequences I have observed include the disappearance of gay-connected blackmail, the increasing number of LGBT people contributing openly to various sectors of society (including politics), and more and more LGBT youngsters surviving adolescence, who would peviously have committed suicide. And let us not forget Pride – now one of the major tourist attractions of this city, when the LGBT community provides our liveliest annual parade, and the city’s best annual free party.
Rev David and Rev Ivan will probably see these changes as evil. One only has to witness the Belfast public’s overwhelming welcome for our Gay Pride parade, while two tiny forlorn and forgotten groups peddle their dismal out-dated version of Christianity.
But most pernicious and shameful of all this pair’s claims is that [the 1982 gay] ”law change had contributed to an increase in child abuse.”
If either cleric has the slightest scintilla of evidence for this highly irresponsible claim, I challenge him to produce it. There is absolutely no evidence whatever linking gay law reform with increased child abuse. The vast majority of such court cases (both then and now) involve adult men abusing little girls. Even the most bigoted and homophobic of minds cannot show any gay context in such cases.
Otherwise, I demand that the two gentlemen publicly withdraw this monstrous slur upon a whole community. It gives comfort and support to gay bashers. The vast majority of the Northern Ireland public cherishes its LGBT children and relatives, and sees religious homophobes as well-meaning holy fools. Everyone except them now agrees that homosexuality is harmless – whereas homophobia kills. Remember, homosexuality can be found in every species on earth: homophobia in only one.
When will the Newsletter, instead of printing such enormous calumnies without one word of apology or correction, begin to serve the public interest better, by investigating the sources of such irresponsible and dangerous homophobia?
Yours cordially,
P A MagLOCHLAINN
Hon President NI Gay Rights Association
Belfast LGBT Centre
9-13 Waring Street
Belfast BT1 2DX
(028) 9066 5257 / 097 1322 4163
Newsletter (Monday 9 January 2012) article which provoked P A MagLochlainn Letter to Newsletter Tuesday 10 January 2012 OUTRAGEOUS CLAIMS
LAW HAS ERODED MORALITY: MINISTERS
TWO veteran Free Presbyterian ministers involved in the ‘Save Ulster from Sodomy’ campaign have claimed that the decriminalisation of homosexuality has harmed public morals.
The Rev David McIlveen, whose annual church service of protest at Belfast’s Gay Pride parade has made him the most prominent opponent of homosexuality in the province , said that the cabinet papers confirm his suspicions of the time that the authorities were not enforcing the legal prohibition on same-sex acts prior to the law change.
“It was clear to many of us who were actively involved in the Save Ulster from Sodomy campaign that there was widespread support for the law on homosexuality to remain as it was,” he told the News Letter.
“For this particular law to be implemented on the basis of personal prejudice brings into question the right of those who made the judgment to impose upon the public what is in effect a Biblical issue for a large section of the population.
“The passage of time has demonstrated that this contaminated piece of legislation remains a topic of controversy.
“The Free Presbyterian Church was right to take the lead in the controversy in 1981 and its position holds true 30 years on.
The Rev Ivan Foster, who retired from his church in Fermanagh four years ago, went even further then his colleague and said he still believed that the law change had contributed to an increase in child abuse.
It [sic] said that it had been “a retrograde step with immeasurable moral harm to the whole nation, especially that rising generations and their moral perceptions.”
“Today, in the light of the consequences of legalising sodomy, I would denounce that change more vigorously, if possible, than I did then,” he said.
“Our fears of what would be the consequences of change have been more than realised. There is no profit or benefits emanating from sin.”
The Rev Foster, who denounced his former friend and DUP colleague Ian Paisley ahead of him entering power-sharing in 2007, said that he was concerned at what he saw as a weakening of his former party’s opposition to homosexuality.
“In Ulster for the past five years we have had the public funding of sodomy through the auspices of Office of the First and Deputy First Minister. Such a tolerating of the wicked misuse of public funding by the unionist political leadership – some of whom campaigned against the changing of the law 30 years ago – is a stark illustration of the changed attitudes in Ulster that stem from the decision to change the law on sodomy.”
The Rev McIlveen added: “I personally find that there is an increasing sense of repulsion against the act of homosexuality, an example of which is found within the present day membership of the Church of Scotland.”