LIMERICK LEADER LETTER

IN THE NEWS

Last weeks local The Limerick Leader led with a headline FURY OVER GAY HATE PREACHER,with Limericks gay community calling for a meeting by the Reverend Angus Stewart to be cancelled. Apparently Reverend Steweart was planning to address the question of what the Bible teaches about homosexuality at an upcoming public meeting.A spokesperson for the gay community in Limerick Vanessa Buswell believed the meeting should not be allowed to take place, saying "Gay and lesbian people should have the freedom not to be required to live by someone elses view of morality". She called for a public boycott of the debate if it was allowed to take place.As it turned out the Limerick Youth Service the proposed venue for the meeting withdrew permission for the event. In response to this article I have sent the following letter to the Limerick Leader...

The Limerick Gay Community’s reaction to a proposed address by the Reverend Angus Stewart is fanatical and disproportionate, in my view. Understandably the LGC does not share Reverend Stewarts views on the subject of homosexuality, but that’s not the issue. The issue is the right to express a difference of opinion in a public forum in the context of a pluralist society !
Gone are the bad old days when we bowed to the might of the church, and when debate on issues, particularly of a sexual nature were unheard of. In those times one view alone held sway and opposition was barely tolerated. Also past are the days when homosexual people were pilloried and discriminated against because of their sexual orientation. How ironical then that a group representing that minority should now seek to silence the dissenting views of a visiting clergyman! Having suffered the stifflement of the old church orthodoxy are we now to replace it with a new liberal orthodoxy against which we daren’t demur ?

Gerard O’Shea