Extract from the discussion.
“I find it very hard to respect your views because I don’t think it comes from a place of love, I think it comes from a place of hate,’ he told the panel. “I worry that so much of your view comes from not really with an issue of marriage, but an issue with homosexuality. You have described it as a lifestyle. You have said homosexuality drives us further away from God.
“I’m sorry, but I think this American evangelical clap-trap is the last thing we need in our debate.”
His comments sparked this reaction from Spiked Online editor Brendan O’Neill, who launched into his own diatribe about how a debate on tolerance had become intolerant.
“Here’s what freaks me out about gay marriage,” he told the audience. “It presents itself as this kind of liberal civil-rightsy issue, but it has this really ugly intolerant streak to it.
“Anyone who opposes gay marriage is demonised, harassed.”
O’Neill said he felt there was a real “ugly element” to the debate where people who opposed same-sex marriage were ostracised for having a different opinion and used the recent cake shop cases in the US and the UK as examples.
“I think you really see it in this whole cake shop phenomenon,” he said. “This whole thing around the western world where people are going to traditional Christian cake shops and saying to them, ‘hey you, stupid Christian, make this cake for me’ and if they don’t they call the police. There are equality cases, shops have closed down. It’s a 21st Century form of religious persecution. It’s horrendous.”
Q&A: Gay marriage debate gets fiery
“I find it very hard to respect your views because I don’t think it comes from a place of love, I think it comes from a place of hate,’ he told the panel. “I worry that so much of your view comes from not really with an issue of marriage, but an issue with homosexuality. You have described it as a lifestyle. You have said homosexuality drives us further away from God.
“I’m sorry, but I think this American evangelical clap-trap is the last thing we need in our debate.”
His comments sparked this reaction from Spiked Online editor Brendan O’Neill, who launched into his own diatribe about how a debate on tolerance had become intolerant.
“Here’s what freaks me out about gay marriage,” he told the audience. “It presents itself as this kind of liberal civil-rightsy issue, but it has this really ugly intolerant streak to it.
“Anyone who opposes gay marriage is demonised, harassed.”
O’Neill said he felt there was a real “ugly element” to the debate where people who opposed same-sex marriage were ostracised for having a different opinion and used the recent cake shop cases in the US and the UK as examples.
“I think you really see it in this whole cake shop phenomenon,” he said. “This whole thing around the western world where people are going to traditional Christian cake shops and saying to them, ‘hey you, stupid Christian, make this cake for me’ and if they don’t they call the police. There are equality cases, shops have closed down. It’s a 21st Century form of religious persecution. It’s horrendous.”
Q&A: Gay marriage debate gets fiery
