Farron hounded for being Christian
Stephen Daisley writes in The Spectator:
For the benefit of Sky News, standard Christian doctrine says gay sex is a sin. It’s the sin that gives sinning a good name. There ought to be a stewards’ inquiry into why it didn’t make it into the Ten Commandments. But, yes, it’s one of those trespasses we ask to be forgiven.
Sky’s Darren McCaffrey demanded to know Tim Farron’s view on the matter at a Lib Dem event on Monday. In case you’re wondering, Farron hasn’t proposed banning the love that once dared not speak its name and now won’t shut up about it. Nor does he want to roll back any of the gains the gay rights movement has made in the last 20 years. In fact, he has criticised equal marriage legislation for failing to accommodate the rights of trans people and wants to see the ‘spousal veto’ scrapped.
But Farron is a Christian and, worse, one of those ones who actually believes it all. …
This is not journalism, it’s bloodsport for secularists. Farron is not proposing a single policy that would adversely impact LGBT people. He is not being asked to clarify his political principles so much as repudiate his faith. It is an ugly business and one that will be causing Farron acute anguish, something which his pursuers must know. The sight of talented broadcasters reduced to tormenting a politician for his religious affiliation makes for unpleasant viewing.
It has been truly nasty seeing the media demand Farron give his religious views, rather than his political views.
The hounding of Tim Farron reflects the metropolitan prejudices of so many journalists and the social and professional circles they move in. Few are the Sunday brunches in Shoreditch that must be arranged around church services. That helps explain why some questions of faith and ethics are posed and others are not. Reporters are not asking abortion-supporting MPs whether they think a foetus is a baby while inside the womb. No news channel reckons the election turns on a gay MP’s musings on promiscuity and unsafe sex. No Muslim MP has been invited on Andrew Marr to explain how Mohammed flew to Jerusalem on a winged horse given to him by the Archangel Gabriel.
Exactly. It is only Christianity which journalists can find it safe to mock and ridicule.