Ake Green acquitted

Yesteday Swedish Pentecostal pastor (not ‘priest’, please, BBC!) Ake Green was acquitted of hate crimes against homosexuals. I am partly relieved, partly disturbed.

 

Relieved, because I hold to the conviction that Christian ethics require fidelity in marriage and chastity outside.

 

Disturbed, due to this extract from the BBC report:

In the sermon, Mr Green told a congregation on the small south-eastern island of Oland that homosexuals were “a deep cancer tumour on all of society” and that gays were more likely than other people to rape children and animals.

 

A website run by his supporters contains evidence that individual homosexuals are more likely to be paedophiles than individual heterosexuals. This is because although there are three times as many incidents of heterosexual child abuse than homosexual, the relative proportions of heterosexual and homosexual people makes the homosexuals more likely to offend.

 

Even if this is so, it makes me wonder about labelling homosexuals this way. All child abuse is wrong.

 

I remember a student on placement with me who told me he had given a midweek church group ‘the biblical view’ on homosexuality. I knew what he meant. But he had missed out God’s love for all people. Had he really given the biblical view?