ACCORDING to figures released by the Office of National Statistics only 2.6% of people questioned in a recent survey said they identified as either lesbian, gay or bisexual.
This has lead the Christian Institute, which claims to be “a nondenominational [sic] Christian charity committed to upholding the truths of the Bible”, to question whether such a small group of people in the UK should be given equal rights to marry.
This is just the latest in a long line of frankly stupid things “religious” people in a position of some authority or importance have said to try to undermine the arguments for LGBT rights.
Earlier this month, Jim Wallace, the head of the Australian Christian Lobby said that gay people shouldn’t be allowed to marry because they are more likely to smoke.
I mean seriously? THAT’S the best argument he could come up with? It’s so lame and irrational I will not even waste my typing on it.
The Pope has also recently reiterated his belief that same-sex marriage threatens the future of human nature and society.
It’s a great sound-bite but it doesn’t really hold up to any detailed inspection.
The Pope’s argument collapses when you ask exactly how same-sex marriage has undermined society or for that matter threatens the future of human nature. It just shows how out of touch he is.
Usually I would not write an article about any of these comments, I mean honestly they aren’t worth it.
But the comment by the Christian Institute has really got under my skin, not really because its homophobic, I would expect nothing less from such an organisation, but because it totally undermines the ideology of an egalitarian society and actually indirectly attacks all minorities.
This statement is obviously directed at undermining the calls for LGBT rights, however, because of the way it is framed it brings into question the rights of many other minorities within British society as it essentially says that equality should be based on strength of numbers.
Even if only 2.6% of the British population do identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual, (which to be honest is a dubious statement in and of itself) and this isn’t enough to justify giving them equal rights then, for example, Jews should also be denied equal rights to marry, they make up less than one percent of the population.
For that matter Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis Irish people, people of mixed race, black people or Chinese people should also be denied the rights of the majority. All of these groups make up under 2% of the total British population.
By the argument of the Christian Institute, LGBT people should actually have more rights than these people.
I would be interested to know what percentage of the population a minority, or for that matter any group, should achieve before it has enough people to justify equal civil or human rights according to the Christian Institute?
Maybe 50%? This would essentially confine the attribution of rights to just the white British population.
But then the White British population isn’t just the White British population is it, there are White British Atheists, White British Muslims, White British disabled people, White British women, White British poor people, White British criminals and of course White British gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
Even White British Christian, heterosexual men don’t make up over 50% of the population, there really is no majority group in the UK any more, indeed if there ever was.
How about 25%? Something tells me the Christian Institute wouldn’t be too happy with this.
While over 70% of respondents on the census said that they were Christian, only about 18% actually attend church, so it begs the question “how do we define a ‘Christian’?”
While I don’t think you need to attend a place of worship to be “religious” it does bring into question the statistics around faith and sexuality in the UK.
Do, for example, people say “Christian” on the census because they actually believe Jesus is the saviour of humanity or do they say it because they feel a cultural pressure to choose a religion, and that religion, for most British people, is historically Christianity?
My point? Statistics, while very useful for some things, are not necessarily helpful when discussing social or political changes, people don’t always answer questions on surveys completely accurately.
More importantly, if we begin to base a “right to equality” on the strength of numbers within a particular group we bastardise the foundational understandings of the term equality.
Equality is idealistic, potentially unobtainable, and largely more of a theory than a political or social reality, but it is something we should, as a nation, strive for.
Equality produces a more cohesive society and a more prosperous one, based on abilities and talents rather than on racial, sexual, financial or religious background.
It seeks to reduce suffering by allowing each individual or group, regardless of socio-economic positioning, to better themselves.
It is the means to a more stable, united national society and if we begin to say this group of people is more deserving of equality than that group because there are more of them, we have not only failed before we have begun, we have totally misunderstood the entire concept.
Owen Jack Williams 