Again Christian's mistakenly compare LGBT equality to totalitarian fascism

There is always an issue when you start to compare any group to Nazis. You'd better be careful just what words you use to refer to yourself by in doing so, also you better be fully aware of what groups were targeted by the Germans in the 30s and 40s.

It is a lesson that Alan Craig of the Christian Peoples Alliance would do well to heed as he decided to write about "Confronting the Gaystapo" in last week's Church of England newspaper.

He talks for example about facism, then talks of the German Nazis "intended assault on our civilization, our values, our way of life." Seeing as facism can be defined simply as:

the tenets of a centralized totalitarian and nationalistic government that strictly controls finance, industry, and commerce, practices rigid censorship and racism, and eliminates opposition through secret police.

Is the argument that there is only one way that things can be done just such a regime. Isn't a totalitarianism just that sort of thing. I'm not jumping to a false conclusion here he goes on to say:

Our civilisation, our values, our way of life – indeed the national character – are inevitably formed from the values of the Christian faith, as over a thousand years and more 'Christianity' and 'Englishness' have become fully entwined and fused.

Strange that in that 1000 years or more just what an Englishman's take on Christianity is has been known to change at the whim of the Sovereign. Obviously it became slightly defused and refused to a different strand through Tudor times.

He refers to same-sex marriage, although I'd want to correct him to equal marriage, it is the way he does so in light of his other Nazi imagery as SSM, the parallel to the Schutzstaffel, Hitler's SS cannot be accidental.

He makes two rather sweeping generalisations:

In recent decades gay militants have been in the van of the secularist and new atheist assault on Christianity, and as a consequence our culture has corroded and debased and national confusion and self-doubt has grown.

Christian believers have been a lone voice against the resulting sexualisation, narcissism, hedonism, selfishness and materialism.

This ignores two things. Firstly not all those who are attracted to people of the same sex are atheist, many of us have come through the churches. Many of us remain in the churches not because they are totally accepting of who we are, often in spite of how sometimes our churches refuse us into full communion because of so-called pastoral guidelines that emphasis one human condition above all others as being singled out for exclusion. I'll let you guess what that is but by the general tenet of this blog post you should work it out easily. Many of those who are LGB that have been turned off religion have been done so by the church itself, there's a willingness to accept drunkards, work with prostitutes, aid drug addicts etc, but there is a cold shoulder often given to those who say they love someone of the same gender.

The other thing that has been pointed out during the recent occupy movement outside St. Paul's is the admission charges to get into the most recognised centre of the Church of England for whom Mr Craig has no issue writing for. Christ himself turned out the money changers in the Temple for desecrating his Father's House through their commercial practices. Just who is charging materialistically for the narcissism of seeing the work of man's hands? Isn't it selfish to say "no you can't have".

Looking at the calls for equal marriage it is just that a call for equalness, not to usurp anything. Indeed most of those calling for equality are merely asking for religious groups to have the opportunity to take part, if they want, not forcing them to do anything. But also marriage has been open to those outside of religion for longer than homosexual acts have been legal in this country. Hedonism is not restricted to the LGB communities look at any high street on a weekend evening and you will see straight couple behaving hedonisticly. Not every high street has a LGBT friendly bar.

So stop laying all the ills of this world on one group, especially when you complain about them saying wanting long term relationships when you claim they are hedonistic. Surely wanting to have access to long term committed relationships is a sign of the opposite. If you deny that then you are building the stereotype that you can't have a long term commitment.

Update The Church of England Newspaper has backed its decision to publish the piece as it appeared saying the writer had some "pertinent views".