UK evangelist says Tom Daley is gay because his father died
The head of a British evangelical Christian lobby group has angered gay rights campaigners by urging Jamaica to keep same-sex intercourse illegal and reportedly suggesting that Tom Daley is in a relationship with a man because his father died.
To the dismay of mainstream church leaders Andrea Minichiello Williams, the founder of Christian Concern, spoke at conference in Jamaica to lobby against the repeal of the Caribbean island's controversial law banning gay sex.
Mrs Williams, an elected member of the Church of England General Synod, the body which creates church law, apparently said that Jamaica had the chance to become a world leader in battling foreign pressure to decriminalize same-sex intercourse.
"Might it be that Jamaica says to the United States of America, says to Europe, 'Enough! You cannot come in and attack our families. We will not accept aid or promotion tied to an agenda that is against God and destroys our families,'" she reportedly said at the event, which was held earlier this month in Kingston.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/uk-evangelist-says-tom-daley-is-gay-because-his-father-died-9013365.html
(More at links)
This has links not just to my country, but practically to my backyard (the city of Oxford). This horrible individual was invited to give a sermon at one of our local churches in 2009. She got her 12-year-old daughter to sing an anti-abortion song, and explicitly recommended that our comparatively progressive MP should be defeated by a 'pro-lifer' (unfortunately he was). Her organization organizes 'Wilberforce Academy' conferences every year, to train young people to bring 'Christianity' (I use quotation marks because it is limited to homophobia, Islamophobia and the political pro-life movement) into public life. They were part-funded by the American Christian Right organization, the Alliance Defence Fund. They were able to use Exeter College, Oxford THREE years in succession before anyone cottoned on to what was happening; the fourth time (2013) they managed to use another Oxford college. By now, I think the university realize what is happening; and they'll have to go elsewhere. But, as I always say, the moral is: when it's anything to do with the Religious Right, never think that 'it can't happen here', because, wherever you may live, it probably can if you don't keep a strict watch on it.
Anyway, she is a complete and utter scumbag; and even after all I knew about her, this story shocks me. It's bad enough to oppose marriage equality and support 'reparative therapy'; but to campaign for the actual criminalization of homosexuality is several degrees worse.
This is NOT typical of the UK in general, or of the Church of England in particular, but it makes me sick that this could happen at all.
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So Stop Saying That!
