From the Guardian:
Boris Johnson, the Conservative mayor, has pulled an "offensive" Christian campaign advertising "gay conversion" which was due to appear on London's buses next week.From the earlier story at the Guardian:
Revelations that adverts asserting the power of therapy to change the sexual orientation of gay people were due to be driven around the capital came as Johnson, who is seeking re-election in May, was due to appear at a mayoral hustings organised by the gay campaigning group Stonewall on Saturday.
The mayor immediately put the wheels in motion to halt the campaign after being alerted to the plans by the Guardian, and made clear that such advertising had no place in a tolerant city.
A clearly angered Johnson said: "London is one of the most tolerant cities in the world and intolerant of intolerance. It is clearly offensive to suggest that being gay is an illness that someone recovers from and I am not prepared to have that suggestion driven around London on our buses."
London buses have been booked to carry a Christian advertising campaign expected to start next week, which asserts the power of therapy to change the sexual orientation of gay people.These folks never give up. No matter that the therapy has been discredited by all the professional organizations, who warn that the practice of "reparative therapy" can be harmful and should be avoided.
The full length advert, which will appear on five different routes in the capital, is backed by the Core Issues Trust whose leader, Mike Davies, believes "homoerotic behaviour is sinful". His charity funds "reparative therapy" for gay Christians who believe that they have homosexual feelings but want to become straight. The campaign is also backed by Anglican Mainstream, an worldwide orthodox Anglican group whose supporters have equated homosexuality with alcoholism.
And if Anglican Mainstream is actually the mainstream of Anglicanism, then heaven help us. And when did same-sex attraction become a core issue of the Christian faith?
Kudos to Mayor Boris Johnson for pulling the offensive ads.
H/T to Simon Sarmiento at Thinking Anglicans.
Didn't take long, did it? My money was on this happening the moment I read about the posters. I also reckoned that Sugden & Co were banking on it, so that they & folks like Geo Carey & Nazi-Rally, could squawk "PERSECUTION" all the louder. Firing up the home base in readiness for next week's London Gafcon meeting in hopes of boosting turnout.
ReplyDeleteEver Spitzer who wrote the paper proposing that gay therapy might work - has retracted his study and methods.
ReplyDeleteAh yes, Lapin, the GAFCON gathering is London approaches. How nice it would have been to have the ads in place for the meeting. No telling how many gays would have been 'turned' had the ads remained.
ReplyDeleteAnn, obviously reality does not make a dent in their fantasies. What's sad is the therapy does real harm.
Even better, where firing up the home base is concerned, to have the ads "banned", Mimi.
ReplyDeleteTrue. The banning gives them one more reason to tout their victimhood.
ReplyDeleteKJ, that's about right.
ReplyDeleteAnd the promoters of the ad get to say they are 'persecuted Christians'. One might even say it's a win/win situation. ;-)
Honest to Pete!
ReplyDeleteCan it be that the 'Persecuted Christians' are just those who are losing? God I am tired of this. I would have guessed that the UK was farther along than this.
ReplyDeleteI'm tired of this, too, but I expect not as tired as my LGTB friends.
ReplyDelete"Kudos to Mayor Boris Johnson for pulling the offensive ads."
ReplyDeleteFresh Air! May Mayor Boris Johnson be richly blessed in all his endeavors.
Bonnie, he's a Tory, we don't want that :)
DeleteCathy, your Tory is to the left of most or our Democrats. :-(
DeleteThe thing is, this is riffing/ripping off the "Some People Are Gay. Get Over It." campaign...
ReplyDelete...and THAT campaign had people signing their names (and faces) to it. Well-adjusted people, known for things other than Just Being Gay (John "Capt. Jack Harkness" Barrowman, of Torchwood comes to mind).
WHO does this campaign have willing to sign their names to it? Great, accomplished "Ex-Gays/Post-Gays"? I'm waiting w/ bated breath!
this is riffing/ripping off the "Some People Are Gay. Get Over It." campaign...
ReplyDeleteExactly, JCF. They'll just have to switch to martyr mode now. They can take lessons from the RC hierarchy.
WHO does this campaign have willing to sign their names to it? Great, accomplished "Ex-Gays/Post-Gays"? I'm waiting w/ bated breath!
ReplyDeleteI've wondered this, too. Who's this speaking, please?
Maybe I should make up signs "I'm A Conservative Christians and I Proudly Molest Children, Steal, and Kill Queers!" I mean, they do, right? The (anecdotal) evidence is there, so, it's not really a lie! Just 'cause they didn't actually say it . . .
Mark, the ads were paid for by Core Issues Trust and backed by Anglican Mainstream.
ReplyDeleteMuthah+ - this is not the whole of the UK. This is one bunch of retrograde medieval traditionalists who unfortunately have funding for their stupidity.
ReplyDeleteThese folks are in their last gasps in England and over here, and they know it and are getting desperate. I read this from a link to a story in The Independent at Thinking Anglicans:
ReplyDeleteAughton Ainsworth, a Manchester based law firm with a long track record of taking on controversial religious cases, have been hired by Anglican Mainstream to issue legal proceedings against both Boris Johnson and CBS Outdoor.
Thanks for the link, theme. Yes, stupid.
ReplyDeleteThe plit thockens...
ReplyDeleteGuardian Link
Wow! I've got to go out now, but I will link to the Guardian piece as soon as I return home. Thanks for the link, theme.
ReplyDeleteAnd when did same-sex attraction become a core issue of the Christian faith?
ReplyDeleteActually it has always been a central tenet, only since it was peccatum illud horribile, inter Christianos non nominandum, nobody ever mentioned it in church or catechism class. Unless teh gayz got too rowdy and started frightening the horses, then the pulpits rang with damnation and incitements to murder. See the excellent survey of gay history by the late Professor Louis Crompton, Civilization and Homosexuality, for a multitude of examples.
My question is: When are the worthy bishops going to denounce with so much as a word the cavorting around by those Secret Service boys in Columbia? ( . . . cricket chirps . . . )
Of course not. That kind of monkey business is only natural. (Wink, nudge.)
The sin among Christians so horrible that it is not to be named? Or something like that. I'll have a look at the history you mention.
ReplyDeleteThe bishops do, on occasion, condemn fornication, which includes all sex outside of marriage to a person of the opposite sex.
You get an A on your translation. You never knew that classic phrase before? It's ancient. This is why you never read about any gay people in your school books and never knew any growing up. For the better part of the last two millennia, gayness was, with the concurrence of all the highest and most learned authorities of the Church and the State, the *worst* possible sin/crime: worse even that murder, rape, torture, or incest. The ultimate, absolute, most wretched, most ungodly thing anyone could ever do.
DeleteOf course, it was in the interests of the Powers That Be not to let slip that some of your nicest friends and neighbors and kinfolks were in fact the worst sinners imaginable. If you were straight, there was no reason to upset you by telling you about these things.
It's hard for me to convey to a straight person the shattering realization this is when a young, devout Christian gay boy comes to a point of self-knowledge. And then it follows only naturally, as night the day, that out of all Creation, *you* are the unspeakable (literally) thing that God Himself hates most of all.
Which, to put it mildly, is very hard to bear. Very. I wonder if you can imagine the pain, Mimi. Most straight people Just.Don't.Get.It., as I have discovered with what's left of my relations. I'm sad to say.
And it is so incomprehensible, so incompatible with all the other things you have been taught about God and his loving-kindness. In fact, it only makes sense once - much further down the road, if you manage to get there at all - you realize that all that stuff about the gays in the Bible and in all the other ecclesiastical writings was done by straight men for straight men.
Do get Crompton's book, it is full of quotations from primary sources and is a most excellent survey. You, I know, have the intellect to appreciate the research.
I wonder if you can imagine the pain, Mimi.
DeleteRuss, I'm sure I can not, and I am sorry that for so many years I didn't even think about the pain that LGTB persons experience throughout their lives. Finally, far too late, my eyes were opened, but I will never really know what it was like.
I might have added up there, not only are you carrying around this terrible secret, this unholy dread of eternal damnation - but about the same time, it seems that everybody else seems to know it too, and so you get pounded and beaten - quite literally - both on the inside and on the outside. At the time of life when your (straight) friends are just being themselves, growing and dating and having fun and just enjoying the sensations of being young, happy animals for the most part.
DeleteIt takes a great toll; the wonder is that any of us lived through all that. The effects, the wounds, the scars, you carry with you the rest of your life, a veteran of fire and sword. Something that people who have always been told, "Oh just be yourself, and life will work out fine" can't relate to, unless they have great insight.
But I believe you can understand, Mimi, and that makes all the difference. Bless you for that.
I take the blessing, Russ. Thank you.
DeleteIf I could go back in time, I would not choose my teen years, as that was not a particularly happy time in my life. To have to deal with being gay or lesbian during that period piled on top of the other struggles would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible. Again, I can't imagine, but I understand, but only a little, how formidable it must have been just to keep going.
Stonewall (the charity whose "Some People Are Gay. Get Over It" ads Core Issues/Anglican Mainstream have tried to rip off) have an ad out either now or soon, also on the sides of buses, which I think is about marriage equality and which I am looking forward to seeing. So, it's a big win for Stonewall, really, that their opponents have attempted to copycat them in this way and failed miserably.
ReplyDeleteIn the meantime, no one buys what Anglican Mainstream are trying to say other than people in Anglican Mainstream and other homophobic Christians. I doubt the ads would have persuaded a single person even if they had run. That's not to say they should have been permitted to.
Anglican Mainstream is no more mainstream than I am mainstream on the political scene here in the US. The deceptive name they chose for themselves irks me each time I hear it or see it. If the courts permit them to put up the ads, I hope they backfire.
DeleteBishop Beaver College has a group called Ænglican Mainstay and they can be relied upon to make entirely appropriate parallel comments. They will be launching an "On the Buses" campaign that will allow people to have the church confirm their prejudices for them in an oh so Christlike manner. "Join Our Club and Heap Disrespect On People You Think You Shouldn't Like Anyway."
ReplyDeleteWelcome, Mother, Sister, Miss Kitty, La Reverenda, whatever is your preferred manner of address. I want to get it right! I hope your signs will be posted in time for the gathering of the GAFCONites in London. They will be so pleased, and I'm quite sure there will be a veritable stampede of gays to the straight life once the signs are posted. We'll be watching.
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