To the Home Secretary, Mr. R. A. Butler, P.C.
The Religion and Morals Committee of the Synod of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland view with grave concern and alarm the recommendations of the Wolfenden Committee on Homosexuality and Prostitution. We hereby utter our solemn and emphatic protest against these recommendations, and pray that the Government will refuse to legislate along the lines suggested.
We fully agree with the member of the Committee who dissented from its findings when he says that if the recommendations of the Committee, that homosexual behaviour between consenting adults be no longer treated as a criminal offence, be adopted, the moral force of the law would be weakened, and that “the current relaxed attitude towards moral conduct and relationship, so prevalent everywhere, makes the present an inopportune time for loosening bonds and removing restrictions.”
Be it noted, moreover, that the civil law, whose moral force is thus weakened, is based upon the Divine Law as given by the Eternal God in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. In these Scriptures we find, in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, a fearful example of the punishment of a people who were given over to the sin of homosexuality. Under the government which the Lord set up in Israel there was a special precept abolishing the sodomite from among the sons of Israel (Deuteronomy xxiii. 17). When Asa brought about a reformation in Judah it is particularly noted that “he took away the sodomites out of the land” (I. Kings xv. 12); which work was completed by his son, Jehoshaphat (I. Kings xxii. 46). In the Epistle to the Romans i. 25-27, we find homosexuality brought forward as an evidence of the degradation to which people had sunk who “did not like to retain God in their knowledge,” while in I. Cor. vi. 9, we find those who commit this sin among those who shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
In the light of the foregoing revelation of the mind of God, this professedly Christian nation should have nothing to do with removing this form of sin from the category of criminal offences, being firmly convinced that if Parliament is called upon to legislate on the recommendations of the Wolfenden Committee’s Report they would be serving the highest interests of the country from a religious and moral point of view by throwing them out. “They that forsake the law praise the wicked: but such as keep the law contend with them” (Proverbs xxviii. 4).
On behalf of the Committee,
JOHN COLQUHOUN, Convener.
Free Presbyterian Manse,
Glendale, Isle of Skye,
Inverness-shire.