Joseph Devine: Gay Conspiracy to Destroy Christianity

According to the Rt Rev Joseph Devine, Bishop of Motherwell and president of the Catholic Education Commission, the "gay lobby" in Scotland is behind a "huge and well-orchestrated conspiracy" against Christian values, Christian beliefs, and Christian institutions. He says that this "giant conspiracy" is designed to shape public policy.

He's right, in a sense, though it's not a "conspiracy." Gays are trying to shape public policy and public opinion in order to ensure that gays are treated like equals. It's not an opposition to Christian values, beliefs, or institutions except insofar as they stand against the equality of gays. I think, though, that's just where Joseph Devine stands.

He singled out the actor Sir Ian McKellen, who was given a New Year honour for services to gay rights, pointing out that Oscar Wilde was locked up only a century ago for homosexual acts.

Source: Scotsman (via New Humanist)

Does this mean that he would prefer it if Sir Ian McKellan were locked up? If so, he should be honest enough to say so directly; if not, he should be able to say what he means more clearly.

The bishop said he would "not tolerate" the "behaviour" of a child struggling to come to terms with his or her homosexuality. ...After Bishop Devine's lecture, entitled Sectarianism and Secularism: Bugbears for the Catholic Church in Scotland, one audience member asked how Catholic parents should "come to terms with a child's mission to become homosexual". The bishop replied: "This must be a nightmare moment for any parent. There are many days when I'm glad to not be a parent. I would try to handle it with a degree of compassion, but I would not tolerate [it]."

And what, exactly, would he do with such a child? Actually, I'm not sure I want to know — I'd just be happy knowing that no one makes the mistake of putting him in that position over a child.

In the fourth of the Gonzaga Lectures held at St Aloysius' College in Glasgow on Tuesday, Bishop Devine said: "The homosexual lobby has been extremely effective in aligning itself with minority groups.

"It is ever-present at the service each year for the Holocaust memorial, as if to create for themselves the image of a group of people under persecution. We neglect the gay movement at our peril."

Given the fact that gays were an early target of the Nazis and that they were killed in large numbers in Nazi concentration camps, I think that they are one of the few groups with plenty of justification for participating directly in Holocaust memorials. Is Joseph Devine unaware of what gays suffered under the Nazi regime, or is this just a further extension of the idea that gays should be locked up?

Note above that the topic of this lecture wasn't gays in particular, but "sectarianism and secularism." Equality for gays isn't a sectarian issue, but it is a product of secularism and secularization — and that appears to have been Joseph Devine's primary target:

Bishop Devine also cited the battles over Clause 28, legalising civil partnerships and same-sex adoption. He said prominence had been given to the "supreme moral values of liberty and equality" replacing "truth and goodness" as supreme moral values.

Bishop Devine continued: "It was bound to result in state-sponsored morality at war with Christian values. We must resist being corrupted by secularism." ...He vowed to fight on against the "forces of secularism". He concluded his lecture stating: "Like Mel Gibson, who said, 'I'm going to pick a fight', so am I."

It's true that liberty and equality are moral values, but it's not true that they are given prominence in the modern secular state because they are "more moral" than truth or goodness. Instead, they are given prominence because it's been realized, after much suffering, that intolerance and inequality are absolutely unacceptable — and that includes faith-based intolerance and inequality, like that being promoted here by Bishop Devine.

There will always be conflicts between "Christian values" and the state, at least so long as the state isn't controlled by Christian institutions. Is this what Bishop Devine wants to end? Given his attacks on secularism, it's had not to wonder if perhaps that's part of his agenda.