Yet again homosexuality raises its controversial head as it appears the dear Archbishop of Canterbury has got his knickers in a twist, that is he has got half the Church of England’s knickers in a twist over his views. It seems that some eight years ago he wrote two letters in which he stated he thought a faithful same-sex relationship could be equated with a heterosexual one. Note: it has to be faithful as though all hetero ones by definition are. Well, of course, adultery is a sin be it homo or hetero. Homosexuality has always been with us and always will be, as much a part of nature as anything else. It might not be considered normal, whatever that means, but it is not unnatural and every generation will produce its quota so why not just accept the fact? (Goethe – How can you call anything in nature unnatural?) but I suppose homophobia goes along with it and it’s not just the religious (God hates fags!) who get their knickers in a twist. The Emperor Justinian banned homosexuality because it causes earthquakes. A group of Greek lawyers screamed blue murder at the very hint that Alexander the Great was gay. The Medieval church abjured a certain king to give up sodomy and evil practices lest he bring the wrath of God down on the kingdom. The king in question, once every schoolboy’s hero, was Richard The Lionheart whose statue stands outside the Houses of Parliament and whose lover was the Dauphin of France. It wasn’t that though that worried the clerics so much as the fact that Richard was into matelots in a big way. (No being faithful there.) A monster by the name of Mugabe thinks homosexuals are worse than dogs (dogs are wonderful creatures even if they do have some rather disgusting natural habits) and in Iran a gay can still be sentenced to death for being what he is.

In his commentary Lord Tebbit agrees there is nothing new about homosexuality or homosexual priests and that most people these days would say ‘so what?’ He then goes on “over the thousands of years since the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus set out the code of ethics on which Christianity was founded, our western society has been built on the basic, but vital, institution of family.” Why is it that when Christians start sprouting morality and ethics it’s always always about sex and why do they always revert to the Old Testament and never mention the New. The Old Testament can be made to say exactly what you want it to say and if there are matters in it to which you object you can just ignore them. Under Sharia law stoning is still a punishment for adultery but good Christians wouldn’t dream of using it. It’s there in the Bible though, so why not? Because these books were written by ancient Jewish scribes, warts and all, and have very little relevance to today’s world. Neither does all this fuss and palaver over the Archbishop’s personal views even if they may be too liberal for some conservative tastes.