A BRIGHTON professor today sharply attacked Father Ray Blake, who earlier this week claimed faith communities in Brighton and Hove were being overlooked by politicians in favour of the “hedonistic” gay community. He also blasted the Roman Catholic Church, which he accused of distorting scripture in order to demonise homosexuality.
Writing in the Argus, Professor Sharpe, a Christian representing Changing Attitude Sussex, which works for the full inclusion of LGBT people in the church, said:
Prof Sharpe, pictured in today's Argus
Instead of condemning gay people Father Blake should ask himself what he is doing to evangelise the gay community, and why he does not have more gay people in his church.
The answer of course is that gay people are not there because of the Church’s relentless hostility and its misrepresentation of a handful of biblical texts to condemn them.
He added:
To justify its persecution of homosexual people the Catholic Church draws on just three brief texts scoured from the thousands of pages of the Bible: a) the ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’ story in Genesis, b) the Leviticus holy code and c) reference to ‘unnatural relations’ in a couple of letters of St Paul.
In the Old Testament, which was written in the Bronze Age some three and a half thousand years ago, the Sodom and Gomorrah story is about the failure to afford hospitality to strangers, a dreadful sin in the ancient Middle East.
Leviticus is a long list of so called ‘abominations’ which include eating shellfish, wearing mixed fabrics and having sex with menstruating women.
Leviticus even prescribes the death penalty for disobedient children.
Why does the church single out one sentence in Leviticus, whose relevance to gay people is highly dubious, and ignore hundreds of others?
The suspicion must be that there is a pre-existing prejudice for which justification is being sought.
In the New Testament St Paul actually writes about ‘unnatural relations’ as a punishment for idolatry, the worship of objects rather than God.
Again it is debatable whether he really means homosexuality as we know it, but either way it is the punishment and not the crime.
In his 1986 statement Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict, ignores Biblical scholarship to claim that the Bible condemns all homosexual acts, that homosexuals are ‘intrinsically disordered’ and have a tendency to evil.
With teaching like this it is unsurprising that gay people feel alienated.
Being a gay Catholic has been described as being like a Jew in the Nazi party.
The unfortunate truth is that the Catholic Church has a truly terrible history of misusing the Bible to oppress and persecute many different groups: slaves, black people, the disabled, Jews, women, and gay people are in a very real sense just its current target.
He went on:
Here may well be the explanation for Father Blake’s complaint that none ‘of the parties standing for election locally represent his religious views’.
Perhaps this is because none of them can stomach the obnoxious discrimination which his church pursues against a large number of their constituents, urged on by a pope who instructed his bishops to fight against the Equality Bill with ‘missionary zeal’.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
March 5th, 2010 at 11:50 pm
In the interests of fair play, I should point out that when Fr Ray Blake talks about the hedonistic gay lobby he doesn’t mean to say that all gay people are hedonistic but rather means to refer to those gay people that are hedonistic and a lobby.
You know, just like I can say “blue cars” and mean “cars that are blue and not that all cars are blue.
You can read his side of the story on his blog
March 6th, 2010 at 12:27 am
Prof. Sharpe is well wide of the mark here, I’m afraid, and not appropriately named at all! And as for “Father” Blake: what the hell does it matter whether gays are “hedonistic” or not? He is still espousing vile, outdated, bigoted views, which have no place in a modern, enlightened and tolerant society.
March 6th, 2010 at 7:03 am
@James
So what about the regular hedonists? Is he against them as well, or do they get a pass because they are straight? Who the hell defines a “hedonist” anyway? One who acts only for their own pleasure? I could define a capitalist in the same manner.
As for the passages of the Bible condemning homosexuality, it has been argued that the story of Lot was about hospitality. Why, then, does Lot consider it better for the men to gang-rape his daughters as opposed to two men who he did not even know? More of bigotry towards homosexuals and enslavement of women, really. It’s what we in the business call a “twofer.”
Personally, I think, though Professor Sharpe has his heart in the right place, the Bible is so self-contradictory that it cannot account as a moral code. Too much stuff in there. As our morals have changed (read “evolved”), people have chosen to cherry-pick verses that support the new morals, and yet conveniently skip over the ones they do not like anymore. For instance, have you sacrificed a bull and burnt the carcass to please the Lord with its smell? Why not? Is it only because of city ordinances against unnecessary air pollution and leaf-burning (assuming you would use leaves for kindling)? Or is it because it’s a barbaric tradition, just like most of the twaddle in the Bible?
Why do I have to believe in Jesus Christ’s everlasting power and dominion? Who the hell is he to tell me what to do? Did he ever face the situations that I have? Will I face the situations he did? The Bible is just one more of a collection of myths, fairy tales, and stories designed to explain the world several thousand years before the advent of modern science. I rather prefer the Greek and Norse gods, really. A six-legged horse with fire for a mane? A one-eyed, pissed off god-king with a spear he could shove up your a$$ from around the world? Beats the Bible god any day, I would think.
March 6th, 2010 at 9:39 am
I’ll finish work at lunchtime today and after a quick nap will be hedonistic until the small hours of Sunday (and beyond if I have the stamina).
I may even nail all the chapel doors shut overnight. If you ever lived in a “dry county” you will remember seeing xians being free to do their thang on sunday while you were forced to skulk home from the Spar with booze concealed in an opaque bag.
Bastards.
March 6th, 2010 at 10:40 am
“So what about the regular hedonists? Is he against them as well, or do they get a pass because they are straight?”
Is it a part of “free thinking” that you get to make words mean whatever you like?
The phrase “hedonistic gay lobby” refers to a lobby which is gay and hedonistic. The first two words describe the first. They are not there so you can pluck them out at random and use them however you like.
The same as if I say “big blue cars” it is nonsense for you to say “is he saying all blue things are big?”
March 6th, 2010 at 10:50 am
You’re quite wrong, James! Have another look at what Blakey (“I ‘ate you gays”) says, and you will read these words: “the hedonistic ‘gay lobby’”. In other words, it is NOT just “hedonistic gays” that he objects to: he is describing all campaigning gays as “hedonistic” – but then, what the fuck would you expect?
March 6th, 2010 at 11:06 am
I have just replied to your comment, James, and my message has disappeared again! You need to take a closer look at Blake’s actual statement, as you are misquoting him. He actually refers to “the hedonistic ‘gay lobby’” – ie, all gays are, per se, “hedonistic”, in his opinion!!
March 6th, 2010 at 11:17 am
BTW: I’m gay, and I fully support action in favour of gay rights. I also enjoy sex, good food, and many other “pleasures of the flesh”. However, I do object to this self-righteous, pious twat labelling me “hedonistic” in such a pejorative way!
March 6th, 2010 at 11:34 am
barriejohn
If you contact the tech guy that maintains this website, he’ll help you out with your delayed postings.
Mine were going into the spam folder until something got tweaked.
March 6th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
Sometimes, not often, one of my posts does not appear. I sometimes write another. Then two appear. I am relieved that they are usually more or less the same. I still feel a bit of a berk. I don’t feel so bad now.
March 6th, 2010 at 4:18 pm
Sharpe is right on target. The xtians totally misrepresent the buybull to support their bigotry. Ask 10 xtians about sodom&gramora and 11 of them will says it is about the evil gays.
How many xtians know or admit that they were destroyed because the psycho g0d didn’t like their women acting uppidy?
As Sharpe says the xtians hate nonwhites, gays, and women.
The priest’s statements are no surprise and so must always be slammed down when possible.
March 6th, 2010 at 9:21 pm
Well, I’m a hedonist. I have been all my life. I wasn’t really sure until my parents crushed my pot plant. And while I never porked a man, I can reveal to you that while a girl’s butt is really attractive, there is nothing like getting savage on that chocolate starfish.
So those who think that being gay is some affront to god, can lick my unshowered dick after my assault on said starfish.
NeoWolfe
March 6th, 2010 at 9:35 pm
You do have a point re the now infamous Sodom and Gomorrah, @CybrgnX, but I feel that you have to really perform mental somersaults to avoid the conclusion that the NT condemns homosexuality!
There is an almost identical passage to the Genesis one in Judges, concerning “a certain Levite” (Dr Harwood translates the name Lot as Levit!):
JUDGES 19:20-25 (abridged)
The man said, “Don’t stay in the street overnight.”
So he brought him into his house. Men
surrounded the house, saying to the owner of the
house, “Send out the man who came into your
house so that we can tup him.” He answered, “Do
no such atrocity. Here are my virgin daughters and
the man’s bedslave. Please let me bring them out,
and you can rape them and do to them as you see
fit.” So the man took his bedslave outside and they
proceeded to tup her and abuse her all night.
[In both the Sodom myth and the parallel in
Judges, a host was so bound by the ancient
hospitality code to protect his houseguests from all
harm, that he felt obliged to offer his virgin
daughters to be raped, rather than surrender a
guest whom the code required him to protect. That
Levit’s houseguests were male was irrelevant to the
Sodomites’ crime. There was no homosexuality
taboo in J’s time anywhere in the world. Zoroaster
invented such a taboo in the 7th century BCE in
the belief that he could force gay men to start
breeding tithe-paying believers. He banned
celibacy for the same reason.]
From The Fully Translated Bible (Dr William Harwood: 2001. Booksurge Publishing)
March 6th, 2010 at 10:05 pm
The problem as I see it is that there are still people willing to defer to a book of myths written by ignorant barbarians for their moral guidance. The notion that the Bible has some kind of divine authority is laughable. The creator of the entire universe thinks that the Earth is flat and is motionless in the centre of that universe with everything revolving around it? How utterly stupid do you have to be to believe that?
Also, how obnoxious do you have to be to totally ignore hundreds and hundreds of totally ridiculous rules because they are too inconvenient to follow as well as being, yes, utterly ridiculous, and yet claim that the one rule that allows you to persecute an innocent minority is non-negotiable?
March 7th, 2010 at 1:13 am
True barriejohn Judges does say that but remember the MEN(angles??) came to Lot’s house to tell him that the towns are to be destroyed so g0ds decision was already made. So the gay thing is not the reason, it is actually mentioned in one sentence in a previous section but my proof is down and unavailable. And the story is as Janstince states above, xtians will use and misunderstand anything to support their prejudice and then ignore parts that they find as a problem as Stonyground shows above.
March 7th, 2010 at 11:47 am
I quoted the Judges story because of Dr Harwood’s comments there. The stories are almost identical – another case of a myth being retold elsewhere in the Bible as a completely different happening – and you are indeed correct in stating that it says in the previous chapter in Genesis that God was resolved to destroy the cities because of their wickedness in any case, prior to the incident involving the “angels”. (There are other stories in the Bible, as with many ancient myths, where details, like the death of one of the characters, are conveniently forgotten, so that nothing really ties up, but the literalists always seem to have an explanation handy!) One important thing to bear in mind, however, is that the ancient stories were rewritten (redacted) by the Jews during the Persian Captivity (1st Millennium BCE), so it is not always altogether clear what the originals were saying. Certainly, as Dr Harwood points out, the Jews of the Captivity were heavily influenced in their views by the teachings of Zoroaster, who banned both homosexuality and celibacy. The Jews of the time also wanted to see their population increase as much as possible: another reason for making homosexuality taboo.
PS The Greek word angelos means “messenger”, as does the OT word malakh, of which it is the equivalent, and which is similarly translated “angel” in English versions.
March 7th, 2010 at 5:17 pm
I have already read this and have commented in the Brighton Argus on line as follows:=.
I agree that homosexuality is not a sin. How do you define a sin, to me it is when anyone thinks they are better and more worthy than others. You cannot judge a person until you know them well.
My mother always told me ‘If you cannot say something nice about someone, say nothing.’
Men, women and children are equal, and while the religious factions of the World say malicious things, they will lose many good, honest people who believe in equality.
All those find words do not escape the fact that here is a man who belittles others, either for their gender, or their way of life. Mistaken eh, how are the religious so sure that to hate another person can ever be right… Let them look at themselves.
The Christians are killing Muslims, Muslims kill Christians. Leave people alone, after all your god created man, as you say.
Keep believing if you want to, you have the right, but leave others to believe what they want.
Priests abuse children, is that holy and chaste? I think not
Read the book ‘God hates you, hate him back, -making sense of the bible-then tell me that Jesus loved us. Don’t think so.
Still I must stop as I do not want to preach to anyone.
March 7th, 2010 at 5:28 pm
If you want to find the humor in the story of Lot, ask yourself why he was living there in the first place? Then as god is raining down fire and sulpher, Lot’s wife looked back and was turned to a pillar of salt. I think she wanted to go home, maybe there was a cowboy stirring her mud puddle, too.
NeoWolfe
March 7th, 2010 at 10:52 pm
And by the way, wasn’t Lot the one who got drunk and malested both his daughters? Wow, righteousness has a new spin doctor these days. They’ve risen above child rape, and witch burning. Now they wanna give Terry Schiavo a drink of water.
NeoWolfe
March 27th, 2010 at 3:15 pm
Mmmmm what about the hedonistic child abusing Catholic priests? plenty of them around aren’t there. I was brought up in the Catholic religion and suffered years of violent abuse as a small child, I HATE priests, and ALL religions, if I could get away with it I’d BURN all their churches to the ground, with them in it. I just wish they would all fuck off and disappear, hopefully by the end of this century that might be the case, then at least they wouldn’t be able to spout their vile and disgusting views.