As I’ve noted on a couple of occasions I have a few issues with the ‘equality industry’, the parasitical mix of Quangos and special interest groups that sits astride what is, after, a very simple idea – equality – and seeks to milk it for every last drop of advantage they can possibly get.

I have a very simple view of equality – its for all of us.

And for all that that simple idea has become hopelessly clogged with calcified, over-politicised bullshit over the years, its not something that is, or should be, very difficult to grasp. Equality means nothing more complicated or profound than treating people as people, individuals, rather than as amorphous, homogeneous masses of stereotyped cattle.

Britain is a rich and diverse country not because it contains people who are white, black, South Asian, Chinese, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Atheists, young, old, rich, poor, gay or straight. It is diverse because it has a population of just over 60 million people – all of them different. You can’t get any more diverse that that.

Because I see the world as I do, I fully support the government’s decision to replace the many special interest ‘equality’ bodies with a single Commission for Human Rights and Equality and, to take matters to their logical conclusion, will also support proposals to consolidate the UK’s existing piecemeal equality legislation into a future Single Equality Act, if and (hopefully) when those proposals emerge. In fact, such an act cannot come soon enough for me and modest though my position is in the Labour Party – I am but an ordinary member – I will advocate strongly the inclusion of just such a commitment in our next election manifesto.

Regular readers will know, also, that I am no fan of hypocrisy, and amongst the worst hypocrisies, as far as I am concerned, is that of someone who preaches equality, even makes a career out of it, but who then shows themselves to be someone who defines equality only in terms of equality for people like them.

As is often the case, Orwell said it best:

“My sight is failing,” she said finally. “Even when I was young I could not have read what was written there. But it appears to me that that wall looks different. Are the Seven Commandments the same as they used to be, Benjamin?”

For once Benjamin consented to break his rule, and he read out to her what was written on the wall. There was nothing there now except a single Commandment. It ran:

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL

BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

After that it did not seem strange when next day the pigs who were supervising the work of the farm all carried whips in their trotters. It did not seem strange to learn that the pigs had bought themselves a wireless set, were arranging to install a telephone, and had taken out subscriptions to John Bull, TitBits, and the Daily Mirror. It did not seem strange when Napoleon was seen strolling in the farmhouse garden with a pipe in his mouth-no, not even when the pigs took Mr. Jones’s clothes out of the wardrobes and put them on, Napoleon himself appearing in a black coat, ratcatcher breeches, and leather leggings, while his favourite sow appeared in the watered silk dress which Mrs. Jones had been used to wear on Sundays.

Animal Farm – Chapter 10

Which brings me to Derrick Campbell and this recent article in The Stirrer.Derrick is – well, lets just save a little time and effort and reproduce part of the biography that accompanies this article.

Derrick Campbell is a man on a mission; he has dedicated his life in pursuit of equality and fairness.

As the Chief Executive of the Race Equality and Community Cohesion Council in Sandwell, where he works with key partners and stakeholders to achieve his goal. He already has a number of successes to be proud of, he was Britain’s first black chief officer, appointed 2001, with the Chambers of Commerce movement, in it’s 300-year history, where he led the Sandwell division in the Black Country.

Well, lets see shall we – this is an example of Derrick’s dedication to equality and fairness, lets see what you think.

GAY ADOPTION – “ACCEPTING THE UNACCEPTABLE”

Oops, that’s not such a good start is it? Still headlines rarely provide a full picture of the story that follows, so I’ll reserve judgement for the moment.

People have a right to choose and make choices in their lives; however, I argue that “Just because we can does not mean that we should.”

Well yes, Derrick, that’s fair enough as long as what you’re advocating here is the principle that people should be free to make their own moral and ethical judgements about how they live their live without undue interference from others, but is that really where you’re going with this?

This debate around homosexuals and lesbians being allowed to impose their views on others in society is wholly wrong. The discussion is not about abusing or oppressing people who have these tendencies but one of morality and what is acceptable and natural.

Evidently not.

Derrick is, of course, referring to the recent furore over the government’s as yet unpublished Sexual Orientation (Provision of Good and Services) Regulations which provide the gay community with the same basic right not to be unlawfully discriminated against as is already enjoyed by women, ethnic minority communities and religious believers.

I’ve highlight three crucial words there – same basic right. We’re not talking about homosexuals being give more right than others and certainly not talking about them ‘imposing their views on others in society’, simply afforded them the same legal protection against unlawful discrimination that we already give to others who we know to be, on occasion, subjected to irrational and unjustifiable prejudice.

As for this being about ‘morality’ and ‘what is acceptable and natural’, let’s look at Derrick’s next statement before we get into that fully.

In this so called tolerant society we spout that people have the right to express their preferences, choice and ‘free will’, but being forced to accept something that is abhorrent to true Christians, and clearly against nature, is a worrying situation.

Well, the one thing I do agree with Derrick on is that this is a worrying situation. It worries me greatly that a man who considers himself to be some sort of ‘champion’ for equality sees nothing at all wrong in spouting such errant, prejudicial nonsense.

Let’s take ‘morality’ first – and the question has to be who’s morality are we talking about here. Certainly not mine.

What two consenting adults (or perhaps more, on occasion) get up to in the privacy of their own home, and especially the privacy of their bedroom is no business of mine, nor of Derrick Campbell’s.

I see nothing morally wrong with homosexuality and while I do much care for people who do, I also accept that they have the right to hold a different opinion on this matter from myself. What I don’t accept, however, is that anyone has the right to enforce their moral beliefs on me, or society in general, if whatever it is they happen to be moralising about causes no harm – and homosexual relationships between consenting adults harm no one.

As for whether homosexuality is ‘clearly against nature’ – Derrick you are talking complete and utter rubbish.

We are here today because of a process of evolution by natural selection – as outlined by the great Charles Darwin, first in ‘On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection‘ and then more specifically in the case of our particular species, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, in ‘The Descent of Man‘.

Natural Selection is a process in which the transfer of certain genetic characteristics and traits are passed on from generation to generation according to whether, and to what extent, they confer a survival advantage on the species in question.

Now, in the case of homosexuality, that may seem a rather counter intuitive statement as homosexuality would seem to preclude reproduction, which is necessary to pass on genes to the next generation, but such a view is one that takes a stupendously narrow and ill-informed view of natural selection, not least because homosexuals are perfectly capable of reproducing if they choose to, give or take the usual vagaries of human fertility.

So, in terms of the question of whether homosexuality is ‘against nature’ one has to consider two things; does it have a genetic basis and, if so, is its incidence sufficiently prevalent to suggest that it is a trait that natural selection has either favoured, or at least treated as being sufficiently benign as to not require it to be eradicated from the species in the interests of survival.

Well, on the question of whether homosexuality has a genetic basis, the answer seems to be that it does, at least in part. This is admittedly a controversial area of study and one that is not always popular with the gay community for fairly obvious reasons. If homosexuality were to be found to be based entirely on a genetic predisposition then this would be seen by some as a basis upon which it could be bred out of the species, either by eugenic means or using some form of direct genetic manipulation – a foul and wholly unethical prospect as I’m sure most rational people would agree.

So far as the evidence stands at present, it seems to suggest that things are rather more complicated than simply whether someone has ‘gay genes’ or not – other environmental and social factors do come into play – but one can say with a fair measure of confidence that it has some genetic components and these, therefore, must be subject to the process of natural selection provided that the prevalence of homosexuality is sufficiently high as to preclude the possibility of it arising by means of a chance mutation.

The question of just how many people are actually gay is a complex one, not least as social pressures all too frequently serve to cause people to deliberately conceal their sexuality for fear of prejudice and discrimination, and also because human sexuality is rather more complex than simple delineations like gay, straight and bi-sexual. My own view of human sexuality is (I hope) rather more nuanced inasmuch as I see it not as limited series of convenient little boxes in which people can be put but as continuum within which people can move around according to their particular circumstances and situation. Homosexual and Heterosexual are labels that define opposite ends of that continuum but as for people, they can ‘sit’ at different points in that continuum at different times.

However, to stick with conventional labels in the interests of retaining a degree of simplicity of argument, the most commonly cited estimate for the ‘incidence’ of homosexuality (around 10%) derives from the Kinsey Reports, and more recent research now suggests this figure to be on the high side; 3-5% of the population is increasingly coming to be thought as a more realistic figure based on modern research.

Whatever. Whether its as low as 3% or as high as 10%, the base incidence of homosexuality in humans is still far too high to be accounted for by mere chance and that alone suggests that there is some survival advantage in homosexuality and that that advantage is sufficient for it to have ‘survived’ the process of natural selection – as to what advantage exactly, this has yet to be determined although as a reasonable source for a working hypothesis i would venture that one would have to look to the social (and sexual) behaviour of our close relative, the Bonobo (or pygmy chimpanzee) and the role this plays in cementing their social structures. As the British primatologist, Richard Wrangham as noted:

[Common] Chimpanzees and Bonobos both evolved from the same ancestor that gave rise to humans, and yet the Bonobo is one of the most peaceful, unaggressive species of mammals living on the earth today. They have evolved ways to reduce violence that permeate their entire society. They show us that the evolutionary dance of violence is not inexorable.

It seems reasonable to me, from that, that the survival advantage in homosexuality is likely to be linked to our species’s evolutionary development as a co-operative, social animal.

Where this all leads, for anyone who accepts the validity of Darwinian evolution (and I certainly do) is to a simple conclusion. Homosexuality is entirely natural having evolved as a fairly common trait in the human species through the process of natural selection – in fact you simple cannot get any more natural than that.

What is entirely unnatural, is the belief that homosexuality is ‘against nature’ based on a personal belief in an entirely artificial sociological construct – god.

This country and government has got itself into an awful mess and I am amazed at the ease in which homosexuality has now taken the high ground and all who wish to express their objection to the practice have now become the villains, being labelled as ‘homophobic,’.

Well, Derrick, if the cap fits…

Well if that is the case, the bible is homophobic, God is homophobic and all His followers are homophobic. Do we then go on to criminalize all who oppose this law? Well that will mean a whole lot of people going to prison.

Rubbish.

The Bible contains very few presumed references to homosexuality and the vast majority of those are unclear, not least in terms of the accuracy with which source texts were translated from Hebrew and Aramaic into, first, Greek, then Latin and then eventually into English.

It also relates three stories that could easily interpreted as depicting same-sex relationship – Ruth and Naomi, David and Jonathan and Daniel and Ashpenaz.
Without getting into a full essay on the subject of the different interpretations of Biblical texts, a fairer assessment of the Bible would be that where it appears to homophobic, by modern standards, it is highly likely (almost certain, in my view) that that is a reflection of the particular prejudices of earlier authors and translators, particularly in the case of St Paul, whose writing evidence both homophobia and a deeply marked misogyny.

Still, if you wish to debate Biblical morality, Derrick, then perhaps you would enlighten us all as to the moral message of Judges 19:14-29, a charming little tale in which a mob surrounds the house of old farmer in the town of Gibeah in the tribe of Benjamin and demands the householder should hand over to them an unnamed male Levite traveller, who the farmer has charitably given food and lodgings to for the night, so that they may ‘know him’.

‘Know him’ here is generally treated in its usual Biblical fashion as a sexual euphemism although it is entirely unclear if this is actually what was meant in the original text.

Whatever. What happens next it what matters as in order to avoid giving up his guest, the farmer offers to hand over to the mob both the visitor’s concubine and his virgin daughter. In the event its the concubine who is handed over and gang-raped by the mob until the next morning, when she manages to return to the houseand dies on the doorstep.

This results in a genocidal civil war, in which the other 11 tribes of Israel gang up on the tribe of Benjamin and slaughter all their women having first vowed not to allow the men of the tribe to marry their daughters.

However, after all this they decided that could not allow the tribe to die out altogether and as they couldn’t break their vow either, they solved their little dilemma they wiped out all the inhabitants of the town of Jabesh Gilead, which hadn’t joined in the civil war, but for 400 virgins, who were given to the tribe of Benjamin and then conspired with the tribe to kidnap girls from the town of Shiloh during a festival, the logic of that little escapade being that as the women were kidnapped and forced in marriage without their fathers’ permission, the vow hadn’t been broken.

And the moral of that story is, Derrick?

As to whether god is homophobic, in a literal sense the question is moot so far as I’m concerned as the question amounts to ‘can something that does not exist be homophobic?’.

However, in the interests of fair play let’s no dismiss the question out of hand.

Rather, perhaps we should reframe the question in a different manner – with the whole universe to (allegedly) look after, does anyone really think that god (if he/she/it exists) actually gives a toss?

Exactly where on god’s ‘to do’ list is an individual decision as to whether someone prefers Arthur or Martha likely to sit as compared to, say, a supernova or a black hole?

And as for ‘all His followers are homophobic’, I should think there’s a fair number of Christian out there who’ll look at that statement and think ‘Oi! Leave me out of it!’.

No, Derrick, all Christians are NOT homophobic. Many take a far more sensible and enlightened view of the contents of the Bible that, it seems, you do and can happily exclude themselves from any such criticism.

This behaviour has stealthily crept out on TV screens, into our theatres, advertisements, etc and the church – which is supposed to be the custodian of truth, ethics, morality and good principles – has idly sat by for many years and allowed this to happen.

I don’t know about ‘steathily’, Derrick. There is a segment of society that scream s loudly enough about it any time there’s a gay (theatrical) scene on the TV and its still the case that the majority of depictions of homosexuality tend to be rather negative and depict people who are somehow ‘tortured’ by their sexuality. Positive images of homosexuality, especially male homosexuality, are still relatively few and far between and rarely does a TV programme provide a joyful picture, such as that put over by ‘Queer As Folk’.

Okay, lesbianism tends to get a slightly better ‘press’ (if that’s the right word), but then it also gets a fair-sized male heterosexual audience as well. That’s still, however, rather the exception and, let’s be honest, much of the ‘hot girl-on-girl action’ that does leak into the mainstream is far from being realistic anyway.

What interests me most, though, is this idea that ‘the church… has idly sat by for many years and allowed this to happen.’

Well, first off I’m not sure that you can safely talk in terms of ‘the church’ – this isn’t the Middle Ages and even within Christianity there is no ‘one true church’, or at least not one that all Christian agree on.

Then there’s this business of the church allowing this to happen. What makes you think its the Church’s decision – last time I looked we still live in a Parliamentary democracy and not a theocracy, so I’m not sure where you get the idea that church could or should have some sort of veto on this kind of thing.

Now that the majority of people are asking the questions “Why are we being force-fed things that are completely against our core beliefs, rights and moral principles? Why are we being pushed aside for something that what has long since been regarded as a sinful act, but which is now gaining high prominence in our society”.

Majority, Derrick? And your evidence for that claim is?

I dare say that you’re referring to the last census and the 72% of people who ticked the box that said ‘Christian’ the majority of whom almost certainly did so for no better reason than that’s what their parents put on their birth certificate. I know that that statistic has become a favourite canard of the religious lobby in this country but please, do try not to insult the intelligence of those of us who can actually weigh ‘evidence’ like that properly.

And, in any case, speaking as a man dedicated to the pursuit of equality and fairness would you not agree that one of prime tests of a civilised society is not whether it slavishly follows in the wake of the tyranny of the majority (bit of Plato, there for you) but rest, instead, in the tolerance and respect it displays towards its minority communities? At least that’s what I think – you may take a different view.

As for your claim that you are being ‘force-fed things that are completely against our core beliefs, rights and moral principles’ is that really what you think?

No one here is trying to tell what to believe – if you wish to espouse Biblically derived prejudices against homosexuals then you’re perfectly entitled to do so.

What is happening is that a democratically elected Parliament has determined that the common good of the British people is best served by the prohibition of certain behaviours that specifically discriminate against a section of society, in much the same way that an earlier Parliament arrived at the same conclusion in regards to prejudice and discrimination against individuals on the grounds of the racial/ethnic identity.

Outlawing racial discrimination has not made racism ‘go away’ – some people are still racist, but what is has done is afforded victims of racism with a legal means of redress when that racism is expressed outwardly in terms of discrimination and abuse.

How does that differ from the situation today vis-a-vis homosexuality? After all, the rights afforded to homosexuals by the Sexual Orientation Regulations are almost identical to those contained in the Race Relations Act – and I say almost because one has to acknowledge that specifically religious institutions, i.e. churches, will be given certain exemptions on regulations covering homosexuality that they do not have in relation to race and ethnicity.

A church cannot legally turn away a would-be worshipper because they are black, but it can turn one away because they are gay.

Can you justify that Derrick? I can’t, not in any circumstances.

And please, do not try and patronise me with the canard that claims that this is not about sexuality but about sexual conduct, just exactly how mean-spirited a view of the world does that evidence – you can have you sexuality just don’t you dare express it.

And that, apparently, is ‘morality’.

Speaking of which…

I am a Christian and feel that I am being forced down a road of accepting immorality, simply because the gay lobby is strong and attempting to force me to accept their behavior – which I have strong objections to. To then be expected to show acceptance of this behavior is completely against my conscience and core values.

Again, no one is asking you to personally accept homosexuality. What you are expected to accept that discrimination against homosexuals in the provision of good and services (but, alas, not church services – boom-boom) will be unlawful with the passing of these regulations.

And if you have a problem with that, then frankly you have no business whatsoever styling yourself as being ‘dedicated to equality and fairness‘.

Who stands up for me? And why should this desire for legalizing sodomy now force religion onto the ropes and put it into a position where it is seen as the great evil in our society.

I beg your pardon Derrick? Legalising Sodomy?

You are a little behind the time here, I fear – “Sodomy” between consenting adults has been legal in the UK since the passing of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, which was introduced a private members’ bill by Leo Abse and Lord Arran and, itself, based on the 1957 Wolfenden Report.

Okay, so it took until 2000 to give male homosexuals parity in terms of the age of consent – this was 21 under the 1967 Act, and dropped to 18 in 1994 before finally falling to 16 in 2000. That’s far from ideal, but at least we got there eventually, which is something.
More to the point, the 2003 Sexual Offences Act finally removed the offences of gross indecency and buggery from statute law in the UK, in addition to legalising sexual activity between more than two men (yes, right up until 2003 homosexual men could be prosecuted for indulging in group sex, while no restriction applied to heterosexuals – although quite how this might have applied to a heterosexual ‘gang bang’ is a matter on which I’m far less clear) so I’m afraid, Derrick, that your hobby horse has long since bolted anyway.

For someone who worked professionally in the field of ‘equality’ you seem remarkably ill-informed as to the contents of the Sexual Orientation Regulations, which I find quite remarkable given that, although the regulations for England and Wales have yet to be published, those for Northern Ireland were in print and freely accessible via the Parliament website – that or you’re deliberately trying to mislead the public as to the contents of the regulations, which have nothing whatsoever to do with or say on the subject of ‘sodomy’.

Perhaps you might explain that, Derrick? Were you unaware or or misinformed as to the contents of the regulations, or were you simply putting your own spin on things to suit your own personal agenda?

From your comments it seems that you’d like to Britain’s law rolled back to what they were prior to 1967 – have you any conception of what that would mean?

Maybe you’ve heard of a man by the name of Alan Turing. Turing was a scientist, a war hero – at least in so far as I regard his work at Bletchley Park on the cracking of Enigma code is concerned; heroism can take many forms – and with John Von Neumann, one of the two fathers of modern computing.

Turing was also a homosexual, and in 1952 was convicted of gross indecency with a 19 year old man, with whom he had had a consensual relationship and was given the ‘choice’ of a two-year prison sentence or probation and a course of ‘hormone therapy’ that would have amounted to chemical castration, the latter of which he accepted.
Having been stripped of his security clearance, costing him a cryptography consultancy with GCHQ, in 1954 Turing found a third option – an apple laced with cyanide – and took his own life.

Have you ever looked into how male homosexuals were treated in this country in the 1950s? I mean really looked into it properly?

The lucky ones managed to keep their secret, if not from the world than at least from the authorities but for those that didn’t the choice was prison or the barbarity of being treated by the state as having a mental illness; one that the state would try to ‘cure’ either by means of hormone injections, as happened to Alan Turing, or, even worse, by use of electro-convulsive ‘therapy’.

Is that your morality, Derrick? Men, and more rarely women, strapped to a gurney while a doctor passes an electric current through their brain to try and ‘cure’ them of their sexuality? Or of not ‘cure’ them, at least render them incapable of expressing their sexuality in a physical manner. Is that your moral prescription for homosexuals – celibacy or else?
You seem to think gay men will go to hell – just what do you call chemical castration and ECT if its not ‘hell’ – and then you claim to a moral man. Well if that’s your morality then you can go to hell as well, because I want none of it.

Regardless of the super liberal do-gooders this is still a Christian country (according the 2001 census) and our laws have been built on biblical principles.

I’m not sure that that even deserves a response. It certainly doesn’t merit one that could be repeated in polite company and I’m trying real hard not to make the shift into ‘swearblogger’ mode, much as comments like that deserve it.

Perhaps its enough to say that this is not about being a ‘super liberal do-gooder’ but simply a human being, one possessed of reason and rational thought, and leave it at that.

The bible teaches that a man and woman should go forth and multiply, leading them onto care and nurture their off-spring.

So what! It also teaches that people should be stoned to death for working on the Sabbath – are you advocating that?

The fact that you live in Britain in the 21st century necessitates that you disregard all many of Biblical injunctions, especially those contained in some of the more prurient verses of Leviticus. How you rationalise that is down to you, but the fact is that you do it, so what the problem with taking just one more of those injunctions and saying to yourself that maybe the world has moved on over the course of 2000 years so maybe its about time that the very limited number of passages on homosexuality went the same way as those that advocate stoning people for working on the Sabbath, domestic violence (and violence against women generally) and other the other stuff that society has dropped along the way for being barbaric and uncivilised.

Homosexuality is clearly acceptable to some…but not all…but it should not be paraded about in everyone’s face as if it is the norm.

But, Derrick, homosexuality is within the normal parameters of human sexual behaviour and that makes it perfectly normal, no matter what you think?

It’s certainly not for everyone, but for those who are gay its a normal as breathing.

They’re not the problem. They’re not trying to impose their values, beliefs and lifestyle on you, me or anyone else. They just want to treated with the same basic respect and courtesy as everyone else – as equals.

I do not advocate victimization or discrimination against gay people but I do believe in fulfilling the scriptural command of teaching people who engage in these practices that God condemns what they do and calls them to turn away from it, and He will help them to be complete in Him.

Except, Derrick, that’s precisely what you are advocating. What the Sexual Orientation Regulations do is make it unlawful to discriminate against homosexuals because of their sexuality, and what you want are exemptions that would allow religious believers to discriminate against homosexuals.

No amount of semantic salami-slicing or talk of ‘sodomy’ around the presumed difference between sexuality and sexual conduct is going to alter that basic fact in any way, shape or form. Nor does it alter the fact that what you taking about here is not a matter of conscience or religious ‘liberty’ but a desire to impose your values and your morality on society, whether or not people like myself are willing to accept those values.

If you dislike ‘sodomy’ so much, then don’t do it. Its a simple as that.

You have the right NOT to be a homosexual, that’s your choice, your privilege and your prerogative. What you do not have, in this case, as in so many others, is the right to dictate to others what they can and cannot do and who they can and cannot be, so long as such matters remain private, cause no harm to other and take place between consenting adults.

Homosexuality is a sin and if we try to call it anything else we to become part of the move to erode the scriptural truth and then we are really in trouble and skating on thin ice.

I disagree, obviously.

What you call the ‘scriptural truth’ is nothing more than a semi-coherent collection of myths and folk tales, the precise contents of which were not even agreed up until more than three centuries after the events that the New Testament purports to depict.

Little or nothing that you refer to as ‘truth’ can be backed up with contemporaneous documentary evidence and studies in comparative religion and social anthropology can quite easily trace the origins of much of the contents of the New Testament to other religious cults of the same period in which the core texts upon which what we now call the Bible were first codified, the most prominent of which was the cult of Mithras.

That’s the truth, Derrick – the historical truth, however you and those like you want to try and dress it up with claims of divine inspiration. I mean, who are you to say that what I’ve written here is not ‘inspired by god’, atheist that I am – after all if your god is all that claim him to be then he should be perfectly capable of putting these words in to my head without me even realising that he’s doing it.

That’s nonsense of course – what I’ve written here is simply the product of reason and rationality and an education that enables me to express my views in words, and nothing more. How could I ever possibly claim to inspired by something that I do not believe exists any more than I can swallow Derrick’s claim that the basic inhumanity of his views on homosexuality are defined, inspired and sanctioned by the same source.

It’s patently absurd – and yet he clearly expects to be taken seriously on precisely that basis and, more to the point, expects that he and others like him should be permitted the right to discriminate against homosexuals on that self-same basis, or rather on the basis of a dozen or so short passages in a 1700 year-old collection of myths, folk tales and creative fiction.

What was that you said, right at the very start of all this?

“Just because we can does not mean that we should”.

That is sound advice – no two ways about it. So why is it that you and others like you are incapable of applying that advice to what the Bible has to say about homosexuality, Derrick?

Just because it says (questionably) that you should be prejudiced against the gay community, it doesn’t mean that you should blindly accept that view as ‘gospel’ does it – many other Christians don’t.

Equality is for everyone, Derrick, including the gay community – if you cannot accept that then I’d suggest change your biography and drop the bits about equality and fairness as you clearly do not practice what you profess to preach.
Res Ipsa Loquitur