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".

Who do you think you are kidding Mr Walker?

The above sign off  or something similar on a email was what was described by Bill Walker MSP (who had already caused a furore over his comments) as "as quite intimidating actually because ... it reminded me of the pre-war Nazi-type stuff banning things." It is a comment that he has since withdrawn saying it was "intemperate".

However the fact that looking to end homophobia, which is what a cross through the word homophobia would clearly convey as anything akin to Nazism is a sign of an out of touch person, sadly this one is sitting in Holyrood. Surely looking at ending a negative and hateful human attitude cannot be same as promoting one? Yet that is what his original statement would have implied.

The problem that the MSP for Dunfermline had in his original comments was that he went on to say:

"It sort of reminded me, I've seen the old films of people, you know, having marks painted on them and all sort of symbols. I just think it is pretty awful."

 I agree with Mr Walker that the marks and symbols painted on people and their homes by the Nazis was not just pretty awful but a damn disgrace. These were later used in the concentration camps to designate the types of prisoner the Yellow Star on the Jews, the Purple Triangle for Jehovah's Witnesses, the Brown Triangle for Romany travellers and of course the Pink Triangle for homosexuals.

It seems a pity that Mr Walker should associate a campaign to end one type of such prejudice with the people who most notoriously prosecuted that prejudice to the point of putting into concentration camps.There were 100,000 who at times from 1933 wore the pink triangle. 10,000 of these were interred in concentration camps of whom 6,000 perished. Maybe Mr Walker should read about that rather that just garnering information from old films, Heinz Heger's The Men with the Pink Triangle would be a good place to start.

The problem did not end there though. After the liberation of the camps many of those marked with a pink triangle were still imprisoned as the Nazi change in the law from a minor offence to a felony still stood on the statute books of the liberated Federal Republic of Germany for some time. Not until 1969 where these laws repelled in the FDR, it wasn't until 1988 they were revoked in the DDR.

Mr Walker is quite correct that such a comment in 'intemperate' especially in light of the history of those who were marked with the pink triangle. However, Germany managed to change their laws, at least for those over 21, in 1969. While England and Wales benefited from the Sexual Offences Act (1967), the gay community in Scotland had to wait until the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1980 to get the same rights*. Therefore the Germans managed to decriminalise homosexual acts long before the Scots did.

As for the debate on equal marriage Walker has said:

"It is important that this debate is conducted in measured terms, and I have therefore withdrawn the intemperate comment made by me. I will be commenting dispassionately from now on."

I couldn't agree more. I hope he does some reading up on the matter so that he is well informed before it comes into the chamber. Maybe he can meet some of those groups that are campaigning for equal marriage and hear their views and maybe even engage with some of the LGB Christian Groups to hear their views. 

* Two years before Northern Ireland.