Like U.S. Christian Rightists and “ex-gays” who support Uganda’s kill-the-gays legislation, a British lawyer is doing much the same regarding antigay mob violence and brutal 10-year prison sentences in Jamaica and other former colonies of the United Kingdom.
According to Gay Star News, Paul Diamond says the United Kingdom and its former colonies should sacrifice “the secular modern human-rights agenda” in favor of what Diamond contends are “religious rights” to persecute sexual minorities who are entitled to no religious rights of their own.
Diamond told Jamaica’s Sunday Gleaner that Jamaicans should retain colonial laws which formally subject homosexuals to 10-year prison terms, and Diamond offered no criticism of Jamaica’s long record of extrajudicial execution and violence against sexual minorities.
On his web site, Diamond parrots U.S. Christian Right revisions to Christianity, characterizing antigay defamation and violence as the core of the faith and portraying any factual refutation of such defamation as an attempt to characterize the Bible as “hate speech.” In broadcast debates, Diamond opposes religious and personal rights that conflict with his own religious beliefs, which he deems to be the sole legitimate expression of Biblical Christianity.
Diamond has promoted the imprisonment of sexual minorities — as a means of saving “religious liberty” — in speeches in Jamaica, Nigeria, and on behalf of at least one hate group in the United States. In 2004, Diamond assisted the successful defense of Swedish antigay pastor Ake Green against charges of inciting antigay violence. More recently, Diamond has worked in Europe to expand the reach of the U.S. Christian Right legal-attack squad, the Alliance Defense Fund, which recently renamed itself the Alliance Defending Freedom in order to appeal to conservative Christians who believe they must take away others’ religious freedoms in order to increase their own.
Hat tip: @BanGayCuresUK
