Gays should be tattooed with health warnings claims vicar
A Church of England priest is facing disciplinary action and calls for his resignation after he made homophobic comments on his blog.
Rev Peter Mullen, who is chaplain to the Stock Exchange, wrote:
“Let us make it obligatory for homosexuals to have their backsides tattooed with the slogan SODOMY CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH and their chins with FELLATIO KILLS.”
His blog entries have now been deleted.
In others he called gay people an unnatural perversion and wrote a poem about the blessing of the civil partnership of two gay priests in which he used derogatory language.
Mullen, who is rector of St Michael’s Cornhill and St Sepulchre without Newgate in the City, was summoned for a meeting with London dioecesean officials last week to explain himself.
A spokesman for the Bishop of London said:
“While clergy are entitled to their own personal views, we recognise that the content of this text is highly offensive and is in no way reflective of the views of the Diocese of London.”
Peter Tatchell, the gay rights campaigner, has called on Mullen to resign from his pastoral role at the Stock Exchange.
“Given his quite outrageous homophobia, not only would lesbian and gay employees feel unable to approach him but even heterosexual staff would find what he said deeply offensive and off-putting,” he said.
“He should resign or be sacked.
“If he was mocking black or Jewish people in a similar vein, the Stock Exchange would instantly remove him and the Church would relieve him of his duties. He is not even fit to be a parish priest.”
Mullen has claimed he was trying to be funny when he suggested gay people be permanently marked with warning signs and said he has many gay friends.
“Anybody with an ounce of sense of humour or any understanding of the tradition of English satire would immediately assume that they’re light-hearted jokes,” he said, according to The Daily Telegraph.
“I certainly have nothing against homosexuals. Many of my dear friends have been and are of that persuasion. What I have got against them is the militant preaching of homosexuality.”
However, in an article for The Telegraph in March he showed his true colours.
“(The Church) has connived with the destructive sexual and social revolution begun in the 1960s,” he wrote.
“Back then, I voted for homosexuality to be decriminalised. But this meant “between consenting adults in private” – where “between” meant two, “adults” meant men over 21 and “private” meant behind locked doors.
“I did not foresee the obscene and coercive “Gay Pride” pantomimes that now disfigure our high streets.
“How long before I am carted from the pulpit to the nick for preaching that sodomy is not morally equivalent to Christian marriage?”
The blessing of the civil partnership between two gay priests in a City of London church earlier this year caused tension in the London diocese.
In May Rev Peter Cowell and Rev David Lord, two Church of England priests, exchanged vows in a ceremony at St Bartholomew the Great.
The ceremony angered Anglican leaders.
The Bishop of London, the Right Reverend Richard Chartres, said that Rev Martin Dudley may have broken church guidelines barring the blessing of civil partnerships when he officiated at the service.