We now have Red Guards too

Campaigners for all sorts of perversions, sexual or otherwise, are no longer content with tolerance. They demand – and are able to enforce – enthusiastic support.

Like those Red Guards in China, they force their elders and betters to debase themselves by recanting publicly. And what turns them particularly violent is a statement of any position informed by Christianity.

In that spirit, Tim Farron, the LibDem leader known for his sincere Christian faith, was hounded for days with shrill calls to surrender. Time after time his tormentors demanded he acknowledge that homosexuality isn’t a sin.

Now Mr Farron’s religion is unequivocal on this subject. A true Christian like him can’t accept that homosexuality is a valid, morally neutral option. He simply can’t reconcile his faith with this view of life (how he can reconcile it with socialist politics is puzzling, but we’ll leave that aside for now).

To Mr Farron’s credit, he held out for days under a constant bombardment, refusing to answer the question, while his tormentors refused to talk about anything else. That was the modern equivalent of tossing Christians to the lions or, to draw a more up-to-date analogy, of torturing them into renouncing their faith, communist-style. The threat to “smash their dog heads” is always in the background, figuratively for now.

Sooner or later something had to give. Faced with a looming possibility of throwing his political career away, Mr Farron finally admitted grudgingly that homosexuality isn’t a sin. Actually, I agree with him, from a purely Christian perspective.

Homosexuality is usually an innate condition and, as such, doesn’t involve a free choice between sin and virtue. Choosing a wrong moral option is a sin; choosing a right one is virtue. If no choice is possible, then such categories don’t apply – it’s as simple as that.

A useful parallel would be with hunchbacks and redheads. At different times and in different places, both were believed to have been stigmatised by the devil. Yet that belief wasn’t faith but superstition – it had nothing to do with Christian orthodoxy.

Mr Farron’s inquisitors missed a trick. They should have asked him whether he thought homosexual acts were a sin, as opposed to homosexuality in se. For, unlike an innate propensity for homosexuality, actually practising it involves a wrong moral choice. From a Judaeo-Christian standpoint, this unequivocally constitutes a sin, and a statement to the contrary would go against the tenets of both Testaments.

Such lexical laxity on the part of our young fascists enabled Mr Farron to get off with a mere slap on his wrist – and, technically speaking, he didn’t even have to compromise his Christian conscience.

Andrew Turner, Tory MP for the Isle of Wight and another Christian, wasn’t so lucky. A group of students led by a girl describing herself as an LGBT activist invited him to attend a homosexual rally, or whatever that Walpurgisnacht is called.

Mr Turner could have weaselled out of a confrontation easily enough, for example by claiming an unbreakable prior commitment. Instead he took the challenge head on by stating that homosexuality was “wrong” and a “danger to society”. He was thus caught in the trap laid by the fascist agent provocateurs.

Mr Turner was immediately tarred, feathered and drawn through the mud. His chief tormentor proved that her ‘activism’ left her no time to learn how to speak proper English by saying: “It’s terrifying that in this age and point in our development as a society, there are still people that can’t care enough about a person’s wellbeing to just accept who they are.”

“I do not want that person representing the Island,” she added, “because that opinion is not what we think here.” Irrelevant if true, dear. Mr Turner is his constituents’ representative, not their delegate (Burkean distinction).

He’s obligated not to share his constituent’s opinions but to represent their interests, as he sees them. It’s not immediately obvious how Mr Turner’s views on homosexuality jeopardise his ability to uphold the Island’s interests at Westminster.

Agree or disagree with his position, it’s defensible on any grounds, not just Christian but also generally moral, demographic, medical, aesthetic and so forth. But fascism of any kind isn’t about reason, nor about tolerance in whose name it’s mostly practised these days.

That homofascist whippersnapper doesn’t demand tolerance. She demands public surrender and self-debasement – just like her Soviet, Chinese and Khmer Rouge role models.

Amazingly, her illiterate drivel was seconded by the Tory Chief Whip’s office: “We want to make clear there is no place in the party for those views.”

Mr Turner was forced to resign, his political dog’s head smashed by today’s vintage of Red Guards. Never mind freedom of speech and conscience: the braying mob never does. They’re after blood, and their bloodlust won’t be quenched merely by meek acquiescence.

Those of us who have lived under fascism shudder when seeing its incipient signs. Destroying people’s careers for any expression of Christian beliefs is one such.

It’s typologically close to pumping bullets into recalcitrant crania, and the watershed separating the two is instantly bridgeable. Fascism, thy name is now tolerance – Orwell would have a field day.

4 thoughts on “We now have Red Guards too”

  1. Party politics is not for those who adhere to truth, morals, responsibility or conscience. Voters appear to be getting tired of all the deceit, lies and dissembling but no alternative is in sight. Special-interest groups can, as they say in Australia, ‘wedge’ major parties to hold much the same policies about them for fear of missing out. If the leaders of such groups stood as independent candidates, I doubt they would get elected.

  2. “Homosexuality is usually an innate condition and, as such, doesn’t involve a free choice between sin and virtue.”

    As with suicides, homosexual persons also can be seen as mentally disturbed to a degree? Are not totally responsible for their actions?

  3. “the morally flexible CofE follower and PM.”

    PM May speaks in psycho-babble? Many other politicians do too. It is a catching illness?

  4. “Destroying people’s careers for any expression of Christian beliefs is one such.”

    Those doing the destroying one day will find the Muslim destroying them.

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