Memorandum submitted by Reverend RMB West (CJ&I 390)

 

 

I am concerned about the proposed amendment to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill now before you. 

 

Firstly, the high office of the law is to police our streets and our behaviour, not our hearts and our minds. The higher office of pastoring our hearts and minds belongs, rather, to the preaching ministry of the word, in the church, and involves persuasion and admonition, not civic or criminal coercion; see John Locke, Two Treatises on Civil Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration.  Parliament should not try to police our thoughts and affections.  Such ground belongs to God, and it is only befitting to be trespassed upon, Soviet style, by those who do not believe that there is a God.  I trust that the Members of the Committee acknowledge the existence and power of God and would recognise that, in approving such an amendment, they would be trespassing into ground where the law of man is not suited.  And from a secular point of view, you cannot have a free democracy where the thoughts are policed.  Jack Straw, please take note.

 

Secondly,  the moral law within our nature teaches us that sodomy/homosexuality is hateful.  It will not be good for the law of man to fight that.  It will be like a dam across a torrent, storing up trouble for the future.  You cannot suppress what every man (and child) knows in his heart and mind about sodomy - it will bring the whole body and prestige of the law into disrepute.  And think where that will take us. 

 

Thirdly, the Holy Bible condemns sodomy and that Bible will speak, as will the conscience, whether you allow it to or not.  It is better to have the Bible and common conscience support the law than be against the law.

 

Fourthly, the Holy Bible also speaks of the gospel, as well as the moral law.  And whilst the moral law within the gospel tells us that sodomites will not inherit the kingdom of God, the gospel itself tells us that those who repent and believe in Christ will!  What a glorious message for homosexuals - the love and freedom that they seek in sin, is found in its abandonment!  But the amendments are likely to outlaw that gospel message.

 

Fifthly, homosexuals are already protected, quite rightly, from assault - as is everyone else - by the existing common law.  Certainly those protections should be upheld for all.  The proposed amendments are not therefore conducive to the stated purpose since the stated purpose of the amendments is already satisfied!  What purpose, then,  can the proposed amendments have but to undermine and imprison our gospel, our moral law, our religious liberties, and our democracy. This is not what parents and children want. Do you think that the people of Britain will take this?  Such  heinous amendments, if passed, are likely in any case to fall foul of the Human Rights Act, 1998 and the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms 1951, which was designed to stop the curtailment of the "...core beliefs..." of religious liberty.  We also have our revolutionary settlement (1688-1701) to fall back on; and that is more than an Act of Parliament

 

October 2007