WHEN someone threw the word 'theocracy' into the furore last week they could hardly have imagined that an innocent hyperbole would become, within days, alarmingly close to the truth. But that's where things stand in Bermuda after the travesty which occurred in her Parliament last week.

Never has that honourable House been brought into such disrepute by those sworn to preserve it. For those who cherish our long and noble parliamentary tradition this was the greatest of insults.

For in that chamber have sat great men ? brave men; men of compassion and courage who would have voiced their convictions regardless of what expediency would demand. They, like all right-minded Bermudians, would have been ashamed of the array of mediocrities who now fill their seats.

But as we take stock of our collective losses, the dishonour of it all will be found trifling compared to the real casualties of last Friday's events. Of all that suffered last Friday ? secular government, the people's trust, our democratic institutions ? none suffered more than an oppressed minority who had their rights denied to them by their own government.

They would have watched last Friday and searched for some shred of basic decency in their leaders, some hint of conscience. There was none.

What they saw instead was a feckless abdication of responsibility. Of the MPs assembled only two (including the member who brought the bill) would rise. Later, some tried to justify their stance. Others did not bother.

The truth of the matter though is stark and unpleasant. The island's elected representatives could not summon the moral wherewithal to extend human rights protection to a beleaguered few for fear of retribution from ? of all things ? the Church.

What was billed as a 'conscience vote' was, of course, nothing of the sort. It was a chance for MPs to pander to the loudest and most ignorant of their constituents; the sort who employ chapters of the Old Testament as a thin mask of validity for their own bigotry.

It's the sort of people who scorn homosexuality under the guise of piety in an island with an ungodly divorce rate and where out of wedlock children are prevalent. But consistency has never been a Bermudian strong point. Nonetheless, what a pity it is when democracy stops to indulge such bigots.

The events of Friday last have wider implications as well. Coming, as it did, at a time of near-record deficit of public trust in the island's leaders the timing could hardly be worse. In fact, it may well be the last act of a Government abandoning every principle it once held dear.

As former member Julian Hall noted over the weekend, the word progressive in the PLP has never rung quite so ironic. For a party founded on the efforts of the Progressive Group ? whose founding fathers spoke out (often on pain of real, tangible retribution) against social injustices ? the decidedly reactionary tendencies exhibited last Friday could well be indicative of an ongoing identity crisis.

None of this is to say that the Opposition is beyond reproach. In fact, they seem to have done everything within their power to invite it. You will excuse me, I hope Mr. Editor, but the explanation offered last week by your columnist (Opposition MP) John Barritt was pathetic, and manifestly insufficient.

The bill moved by Ms Webb was a Private Member's Bill. No member of any party was obligated to speak on it. Unless, of course, you weigh the moral and democratic obligations those members have to their constituents.

The silence which greeted Ms Webb's bill last week was a barren and craven one. It was a vacuum of judgment and principle and courage. It was, in short, the very absence of leadership. But that is precisely what Bermuda needs at the moment.

Bermuda needs a real leader, one always willing to follow the electorate but ever prepared to follow conscience when it beckons. We need the sort of leader who occasionally rises from the fray to guide and inspire. And the near complete and conspicuous absent of any was one of the many disappointments in parliament last week.

Sir, I would be remiss after making all the criticism above in not offering some much deserved praise. Whatever you may think of Ren?e Webb, of her politics, her personality or her past, one cannot fault her for bringing her bill to the House. In doing so she demonstrated a remarkable courage to stand up to a sizeable church lobby and sometimes stern opposition of her own colleagues.

She was, in a way, a latter-day John Stubbs. And in the scope of Bermudian politics, one can offer no greater compliment.

Yellow-bellied cowards

LAST Friday in Baghdad two members of the Iraqi tennis team and their coach were shot and killed in the street. It is believed they were killed because they were wearing tennis shorts in contravention of the Islamic dress code.

In Saudi Arabia the notorious Religious Police were out on the streets as usual enforcing the extremist Wahabi Moslem behavioural code and the many religious laws that control every aspect of the lives of women in that Barbaric monarchy Moslem or not.

In Bermuda, too, the self-appointed Religious Police, fangs bared, rallied their forces to great effect. Bermuda's Religious Police completely routed our elected Members of Parliament whose duty it is to protect our constitution and law. These yellow-bellied cowards ducked their heads and fled under the threats of the Religious Police. Perhaps never in the entire history of constitutional democracy has such a disgraceful dereliction of duty by both an elected Government and its elected Opposition been recorded.

It is only because Bermuda is such a tiny, insignificant dot on the world's map that we are not now being held up to ridicule and contempt in the press of the free world. Apart from the courageous Ren?e Webb only one lone Member of Parliament had the courage even to open his mouth, but he only did that with such masterly ambiguity that he will probably escape the unfavourable attentions of the Religious Police. The most unlikely of all people, Deputy Speaker Jennifer Smith in the Committee chair, took advantage of an unparliamentary manoeuvre to have Ms Webb's Bill tossed out in Committee so that it never reached a second reading on the floor of the House. Thus, as she and the Government believed, freeing themselves completely from the alarming attentions of the Religious Police. A greater act of betrayal has probably not been seen in any Parliament since the regicides at Westminster contrived the murder of King Charles I.

One dishonourable Minister, whose closet door has never been closed, slunk off the island for the debate that never happened. No doubt the Religious Police will have scented his shameful cowardice and the reason for it and will nevertheless inflict their punishment at the next election. Meanwhile the yellow-bellied "P" had better come out of hiding and fire at least two other of his semi-closeted Cabinet Ministers or the Religious Police will surely bring him to account anyway. It seems that in addition to "house" and "field" niggers, we now have "church" niggers as well.

As for the self-appointed Religious Police, the clergy of some of Bermuda's principal churches may well find they have started a war they will, in the end, not like at all. The Bible supports slavery with far more energy and insistence than it condemns homosexuality.

These miserable hypocrites have the minds of slaves and slavery is all they are good for. Christian ministers they are not. They preach hate, not love. They already have the blood of Oopie Ming on their guilty hands. Despite this tragic record they go on preaching and stirring up hatred and subverting democracy.

The ringleader churches are now known to subscribe to not only some racist and homophobic principles but also anti-democratic tendencies. They condone adultery and support unmarried motherhood, both the principal causes of social disintegration in this island. Any self-respecting government, let alone a governing party that calls itself "Progressive", would at the very least eliminate the taxation privileges of so horribly subversive organisations.

Bermuda has just taken another long step on its slippery downhill slide to "Third World" status, dragged down by a collection of hate-mongers thinly disguised as clergymen. How incredible that the very people who seek to take us to Independence should allow the island's Religious Police to bring us to such a humiliating pass.