Why Christian Culture is Good for Homosexuals

Bruce Bawer is a homosexual who wrote one of the first books warning of the possible take-over of Europe by Islam, While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within (Anchor, 2007) and Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom (Anchor, 2010). It is ironic that he is raising the alarm about Islam given that he moved from the US to Europe because it was supposedly more tolerant!

In a recent blog post entitled, "I’ve Become an Enemy of the People for Speaking the Truth About Islam," he writes:

When it comes to the right to speak one’s mind about Islam, the record of the last few years makes it clear which direction the West is moving in. In France and Italy, Oriana Fallaci is put on trial for disparaging Islam. In Canada, Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant are hauled before “human rights commission” tribunals for criticizing Islam in print. In Australia, an Islamic organization sues two pastors for “vilification of Muslims.” In Britain, a Daily Telegraph columnist is arrested on charges of hate speech for having written negatively about Islam, and the Archbishop of Canterbury proposes that Parliament pass stronger laws against such speech acts. And in the Netherlands, Geert Wilders, the head of the Freedom Party, which performed so well in the June 9 general elections that Wilders may end up in the governing coalition, still faces trial for having made a film about the Koranic foundations of terrorism.

Then there’s Norway, where I live, and where the last few days have seen yet another dark development. By way of background, permit me to begin by quoting myself. On pages 230-31 of my book Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom I sum up the more alarming aspects of Norway’s Discrimination Law, passed in 2005:

It forbids “harassment on the grounds of ethnicity, national origin, ancestry, skin color, language, religion, or beliefs,” and, in turn, defines harassment as “actions, omissions, or utterances [my emphasis] that have the effect or are intended to have the effect of being insulting, intimidating, hostile, degrading, or humiliating.”

In other words, it’s illegal just to say certain things.

Defendants may be accused not only by the individuals whom they’ve supposedly offended but also by semiofficial organs such as the Anti-Racist Center and the Center against Ethnic Discrimination (both of which helped formulate the law, and both of which exist less to oppose real racism and discrimination than to oppose political incorrectness generally) or by the government’s Equality and Anti-Discrimination Ombud.

Which means that a handful of far-left organizations have been given enormous power to silence those they disagree with.

Violations of the law by individuals are punishable by fine; violations by individuals in concert with at least two other persons (such as a writer conspiring with an editor and publisher, perhaps?) can be punished by up to three years’ imprisonment — this in a country where murderers often get off with less. Moreover, the burden of proof is on the accused: you’re guilty until proven innocent.

And this in a supposedly free country.

Read the rest here.

It is true that Christianity regards homosexual behavior as sinful, just as Islam does. But Christianity also believes that all people are created in the image of God and have value just by virtue of being human. Therefore, Christianity makes room for tolerating many things that it regards as morally wrong and it allows for homosexuals to live without persecution.

Most of the confrontation currently going on between homosexual activists and Christian Churches is not about whether or not Christianity is willing to tolerate people whose lifestyle it disagrees with; rather, it is about homosexuals demanding that Christians change their religion and openly give approval to something they regard as abhorrent. If homosexuals would just leave Christians alone to worship and bring up their children according to their own religious views and if everyone agreed to tolerate the existence of those with whom they disagreed it would be possible for homosexuals to enjoy freedom and tolerance in majority Christian countries as has been the case all along.

But if homosexuals join the hard Left in trying to eliminate Christianity, then all they are doing is tearing down the edifice upon which toleration and respect is built. Once the West is on its knees before Islam, does any thinking person doubt that homosexuals will experience persecution, the likes of which they have never experienced in Western history? At what period of history, pray tell, would a rational homosexual rather have lived in Muslim dominated countries rather than Christian dominated ones?

Homosexuals would be better off, in terms of their rational self-interest, to stop aiding attempts to promote multiculturalism, political correctness and the marginalization of Christianity in the West. A Christianity which respects its traditions and Scriptures enough to maintain its traditional moral stance on sexuality is an alive tradition that can provide a foundation for a relatively just society. But a Christianity that succumbs to political correctness, Marxism and multiculturalism (as well as Western self-hatred), can provide no bulwark against the Ayatollahs and Sharia law.