Thought For The Day: Rev Giles Fraser

Hope, then, is the defiance of love, defiance against what can feel like a bleak reality. It is built on the promise that love is stronger than death. And because of this, there is nothing of which we need to be afraid. Not fundamentally.
This is the good news of Easter – which is why it’s so ridiculous that former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey has used his own Easter message to continue his peculiar obsession with gay sex.
It is hardly earth-shattering good news if we reduce the Resurrection of Jesus Christ to some narrow moralism that seeks to police how people love each other.
In his attack on David Cameron, Lord Carey accused the Prime Minister of doing more than any recent political leader to feed the anxieties of those Christians who feel part of ‘a persecuted minority’.
To speak of Christians being persecuted in this country is an insult to those people in places such as Iran and Pakistan who really are...

Rev Giles Fraser, the former Canon Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral, writing in the Mail On Sunday. 
A decent fellow, and a reminder that all Christian leaders aren't antediluvian mean-spirited unchristian bigots.

MORE than two-thirds of the public think the Church of England is out of touch with society and more than half believe it does a bad job of providing moral leadership, according to a new poll.
The YouGov survey, commissioned by The Sunday Times for Easter, also finds that four out of 10 people think priests — both Anglican and Roman Catholic — cannot be trusted to tell the truth.
The findings give an indication of the size of the challenge facing Justin Welby, who will deliver his first Easter message as Archbishop of Canterbury today.
Only 19% of respondents said they could name Welby, the leader of the world’s 80m Anglicans...
The church has been at the centre of several recent controversies, including a refusal to ordain women bishops and a rejection of same-sex marriage, a policy championed by David Cameron.
The YouGov poll shows that 49% of the public say the church is wrong to oppose such unions. Some 37% of people agree with its position on the issue. More than three-quarters (78%) think the church should allow women bishops...

The Sunday Times. 

Oh well, it was nasty nice while it lasted...

Marriage: A Sensible Debate

THE former Archbishop of Canterbury sparked fury yesterday by comparing anti-gay marriage campaigners to Jews in Nazi Germany.
Lord Carey criticised supporters of reform who have dubbed opponents “bigots” or “extremists”.
Calling for a “sensible debate” on the issue, he said: “Remember the Jews in Nazi Germany, what started it against them was when they were called names — that was the first stage towards that totalitarian state.”

This is The Sun's account of His Holy Barkingness address to a "mass rally" of 400 people on the first day of Conservative party conference yesterday.
I do love that call for a "sensible debate" before promptly taking a sharp right-turn to Hysterical-Loonyville-On-Thames.
It's Godwin's Law - and it means you know you've lost the debate.
Sit down man, you're a bloody tragedy!

PS Note to various gay bloggers, tweeters, journalists etc, gay men in Nazi Germany were sent to prison and labour camps, not death camps, and it is morally obscene to suggest there is an equivalence between what happened to several thousand gay men with the systematic extermination of millions of Jews.*
Though it's nowhere near as obscene as comparing the Nazi holocaust to how mad Christians are treated in the UK today, of course.

PPS This seems to have blown over quite quickly in the (print) newspapers - one hopes as they realise Carey is a complete irrelevancy. 

* For more read The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals by Richard Plant.

Letters: 'Bigots Branded Bigots' Bemoans Leading Bigot

Sir, I am sorry that Nick Herbert feels “distant” from the Church over the highly divisive issue of same-sex marriage which his government has forced into public debate (“Gay Tory challenges ‘intolerant’ Church”, report, June 16).
This debate is not about the dignity and rights of gay and lesbian people, who already have the benefits of marriage through civil partnerships, but about a change in the definition of marriage for everyone.
Does he realise the extent to which this so-called “consultation”, with no backing from his party’s manifesto, is leaving many people alienated and distant from his government? It is in fact the supporters of traditional marriage who have been accused of bigotry and homophobia — the kind of intolerant and judgmental language he talks about in his interview.
Lord Carey Of Clifton
House of Lords

Letter to The Times from the former Archbishop of Canterbury - and current Coalition 4 Marriage mouthpiece.

Oh, do piss off!

Sir Ian McKellen: Marriage For Moderns

Every day I care less and less about gay marriage.
Though clearly totemic it's essentially a bourgeois obsession - ever wondered why David Cameron says he supports it?
Though if you think he'll actually introduce it you're spectacularly well-deceived.
The only real reason to back it is cause it annoys the fruitcake out of right wing Christian nutjobs.
Anyway, here's Sireena McKellen's two cents in The Independent.
(I have a hunch it may have been buggered by a sub - hence putting "straights" in inverted commas and using the archaic term "homosexual" etc).
It was written in response to this exercise in mean-spirited inconsistency in the Daily Mail by Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury.
Though why anyone gives credence to anything said by someone who says they believe in a god in this day and age is - quite simply - beyond belief.

PS Wonderful "Ban this filth - but only after I've had a wank over it" photocaption in the Mail's piece on Carey.