May 31, 2011Dear Sir,Christianity and the Law. The Limits of Tolerance.The issue of whether it should be unlawful to discriminate against gay people on the grounds of their sexual orientation has nothing whatsoever to do with tolerance and everything to do with how the State has a duty to protect its citizens from the behaviour of others that would do them harm or injure them in same way. It is noticeable that in the story of the woman taken in adultery, Jesus intervened to prevent her from being stoned to death (i.e. intervened to prevent seriously discriminatory, but legal, behaviour) but left it to her whether she “sinned no more” or not.The point of Jesus’ intervention (let him who is without sin cast the first stone) was to demonstrate his unequivocal opposition to discriminatory behaviour against those whose moral conduct is inconsistent with the Ten Commandments, even where that discriminatory behaviour is by those who sincerely consider such inconsistency shockingly immoral.If one is a Bible-believing Christian, one can sincerely take the view that a divorced man is committing adultery when married to a second wife, his first wife being alive. That remains orthodox Roman Catholic teaching. However, it would clearly be wrong for a Catholic hotelier to deny such a man a room for the night with his second wife on the basis that he was going to use the room for immoral purposes.All citizens are entitled to be treated equally by the State and by all who offer services to the public. This means that if I am a doctor I cannot turn people away who ask for my help with a personal illness, like cancer, because I know they are convicted rapists or child molester or beat their wives.The point is that in a civilised society one is not entitled to indulge in discriminatory behaviour to express one’s own personal belief that aspects of the lives of others are immoral or wrong.It was a commonly held view of Christians in the USA that inter-racial marriage was a sin,”unnatural” etc. Christians are, of course, called to love the sinner and hate the sin, but that is not how it actually worked out for those harassed, imprisoned and even murdered for engaging in an inter-racial marriage.Christians and all other persons of faith are protected under the Human Rights Act and the Bermudian Constitution from discriminatory behaviour against them by those who sincerely consider their opinions about homosexual conduct ignorant, archaic, hateful and flat-out evil. It is positively un-Christian to deny gay people the same legal protection.A CONCERNED NON-BERMUDIANRESIDENTCity of Hamilton