Religion and Belief: British Public Life

Lord Fowler Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fowler (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble and right reverend Lord on his speech. I agree with him about the importance of religion in our public life and I agree that religions have a variety of voices in the public and political debate and make an enormous contribution. I have never believed, as was once suggested, that, for example, the Bishops should be excluded from the most important political debates that we have in this country. But I suggest that there is a quid pro quo: politicians like me should not be excluded from giving their advice to the churches, particularly if it has the effect of making those churches more accessible to more people. As we approach World AIDS Day on Monday, I am thinking particularly of the position of gay people, which appears to present all kinds of problems and challenges to the churches.

The public have flooded to see the film about the life and death of Alan Turing, and rightly so. It is a powerful denunciation of the intolerance and bigotry that held sway 60 years ago when men were imprisoned for no more than being different. Doubtless, some come away with the comforting assumption that that was then and everything has changed, and that discrimination and prejudice have been banished—if only that were the case. The fact is that in almost 80 countries of the world, homosexuality remains a criminal offence. In cities from Moscow to Kampala, the criminal law applies. The only difference between the countries is the extent to which the law is enforced—imprisonment or even execution at one end of the scale and persecution and police corruption at the other. Let us be clear: even when the law is not enforced or when there is not a law at all, there are powerful social and community forces at play. Young gay men, for example, are forced to leave their homes because of the ostracism that their families would otherwise suffer.

What of Britain? Things in Britain have changed. Men are not prosecuted or imprisoned in the way that they once were. But if you ask any gay man whether prejudice still exists he will tell you that it does, in the workplace, in sport and in schools. There is absolutely no reason to be complacent. If there is one thing that we can do in this country to make amends for the Turing legacy, it is to take a lead and show an example in fighting discrimination and prejudice, not only in this country but around the world.

Not all the nations which discriminate will take note of our example, let alone change, but some might. Even more might—here I come to my point on religion—if we could persuade the churches to take a more courageous stand, frankly, than they do at the moment. In Britain, the best, I think, that can be said about the position is that churches are equivocal, cautious and not prepared, really, to go out in front. Overseas, the position is much clearer, but much more dire, as it happens, because the churches, the Anglican Church, and the Catholic Church—in Uganda, for example—actually support the repression there. The same is true, in Russia, of the Orthodox Church.

I shall relate this, very briefly, to World AIDS Day. The fact is that, at the moment, as should be remembered in the context of the Ebola crisis, 35 million people have died from AIDS. The annual death toll is 1.5 million and more than 35 million men, women and children live with HIV. The worst part of that statistic is that half those who are living with HIV do not know, because they have not been diagnosed. A major reason for that is that the barrier to testing is the discrimination and prejudice that take place around the world, not least in this country, I fear, where a quarter of those living with HIV do not know and have not been tested.

These are very important points which the churches in the world and in this country could do much to help and it would be infinitely to the advantage of the public here and overseas if the churches would now take a lead, proclaim the equality of all people and take that into every aspect of their own policies and conduct. I congratulate the noble and right reverend Lord on everything that he has said.