Religion is the Problem, not the Answer

The Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (GALHA) agrees with OutRage!’s assertion that the Church of England has an abysmal record on lesbian and gay human rights, and its recent attempts to worm its way out of human rights legislation show that it has no intention of changing.

As Humanists, we feel that it is important to attack all religions’ hostility to the human rights of gay people because of the disproportionate influence religion still exerts in our society. The general perception of homosexuality as “immoral” springs from religious roots, and until religion goes into terminal decline and is replaced with a rational Humanist approach to sexuality, we will have little chance of altering this perception.

We part company with OutRage! on its spokesperson’s assertion that the Archbishop of Canterbury is “perverting” Christian morality when he refuses to support lesbian and gay rights. To imply, as the OutRage! spokesperson did, that Jesus would have condoned homosexual practices, is simply not true. The Bible is clearly and repeatedly condemnatory of these practices, and Jesus says nothing to distance himself from this. On the contrary, the puritanical views he expresses in the Gospels on sexuality in general (for example his comment on “lust”) makes it extremely unlikely that he would have taken a more liberal attitude to homosexual practices than his contemporaries.

OutRage! should aim its attacks not just at George Carey or Basil Hume – misguided though they are – but at the Christian stance on sexual morality itself which is the true source of our oppression. Religion is the problem, not the answer.