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Cristina Odone

Cristina Odone is a journalist, novelist and broadcaster specialising in the relationship between society, families and faith. She is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies and is a former editor of the Catholic Herald and deputy editor of the New Statesman. She is married and lives in west London with her husband, two stepsons and a daughter. Her latest novel, The Good Divorce Guide, is published by Harper Collins.

Homosexuality is legal. Christianity should be, too

 

By Cristina Odone Society Last updated: May 3rd, 2010

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A Christian preacher addresses passers-by and distributes leaflets with the message that homosexuality is a sin. Should the police a) do nothing because he has freedom of speech and freedom of conscience; b) warn him that his words could offend gays and ask him to move on; c) throw him into a cell for seven hours?

The answer is c), if you are a community support officer for Cumbria Police. Which is why Dale McAlpine found himself hustled away by uniformed police and put behind bars. McAlpine is just the latest in a list of Christian victims of the new inquisition. Fuelling the inquisitors is a vicious secularism that allows no tolerance for views based on Christian values.

This odious regime, bent on suppressing any trace of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, has been condemned not only by the usual culprits (George Cary, Melanie Phillips, Peter Hitchens) but by the great gay campaigner, Peter Tatchell himself. Tatchell, whom I’ve admired ever since he confessed to me that he has been surviving on £7,000 a year for decades, has the right vision: ours should be a society that prizes freedom above political correctness, and recognises that tolerance of religious faiths is as sacred as tolerance of lifestyle choices.

This is why answering a), which is what my knee-jerk reaction would be when confronted with such an obvious miscarriage of justice, is also wrong. Freedoms of speech and conscience are important, but do not automatically trump all individual rights. A civilised, tolerant society requires negotiation between these freedoms and rights, between a preacher’s right to proclaim his beliefs and a gay’s freedom to live out her sexuality.

Such negotiation requires confidence in one’s own belief system and respect for those of others. These qualities have been quashed, instead, by a tiny and unrepresentative political class that respects only the secularist side of the equation. Police and judges take their cue from this class. One more reason to overthrow it.

Tags: Cumbria Police, Dale McAlpine, homosexuality