Why… why… why?

October 28th, 2006

I went to my first ever Labour Party meeting today, which aside from being all exciting and suchlike, was also thought provoking. That was largely because I discovered that one of the four young people, and certainly the loudest, was everyones favourite ex guild president, Richard Angell, who disaffiliated BUECU and seized our funds, prevented the National Blood Service from having a stall at freshers fair - by their estimates, thereby depriving them of 150 new donors, many of whom would continue to give blood for the rest of their lives - and suggested that the Guild throw a party upon the death of Margaret Thatcher.

This was thought provoking for two reasons - firstly, it shocked me by how prejudiced I have been against him - he’s made some decisions that were blatantly wrong, but heck - so have we all - and it’s shocking that I got an impression of him that was anything other than “positive with some flaws” (or ”a sinner like the rest of us”) despite having never met him or followed really any news about him beyond a few controversies.

The other thing, though, that provoked thought (well a third thing is that there seemed to be few if any evangelicals - heck, any Christians - there other than me) was that people were so pro the various pieces of gay rights legislation that came in. Technically, this kind of thought would ordinarily go on my politics blog, but I’d rather post it here because I want feedback from evangelicals.

Basically, I’m utterly confused about why gay rights legislation of the kind that we’ve seen over the past few years from the correct party while we’ve been in power, seem to have been opposed by evangelicals. A group like say the Christian Institute regards its role to be to fight for political issues on which the bible is clear, but not other issues. Forgive me for being really stupid, but I don’t think the bible even addresses the question of whether homosexuals should be allowed to enter the military (a subject on which the Christian Institute has firm beliefs), but it has hundreds of texts discussing poverty - something the Christian Institute seems to have absolutely no interest in whatsoever. I can’t see why evangelicals should oppose civil partnerships - giving legal rights to partners who would be sleeping with them anyway to inherit property etc sounds like a thoroughly good idea. So I guess I have three Questions:

1: Is there really this broad consensus in evangelicalism that these policies are on the whole morally wrong? (I’m not addressing say the incoming anti-discrimination bill, which in some forms could well cause a crisis of conscience for many of us and make us criminals - I oppose some possible forms of that definitely.)
2: If so, why?

[Later edit: Please note that I actually have an A-Level in Mathematics]

It seems to me at the outset that I can see sociological and anthropological causes (related to ideas about boundary markers, for example) for this consensus, if it actually exists, but no valid biblical or theological ones.