LONDON, November 29, 2006  –  A “truly poisonous” campaign is being waged by Christians to render unusable legislation that would protect gay people from discrimination in the provision of goods and services, says the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (GALHA).

And the British Humanist Association (BHA) condemned the sermon on Sunday by Vincent Nichols, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Birmingham in which he accused Government and non-religious people of a lack of morality.

“This is a truly poisonous campaign by a large number of Christian organisations ranging from the fringes right to the mainstream,” says GALHA’s secretary George Broadhead, Commenting on the increasing religious pressure being applied to the government to amend the Sexual Orientation regulations to allow people to disregard them on the grounds of conscience or religious belief.

“They are seeking to rob gay people of their basic right to protection from unjust treatment,” he insisted.

Mr Broadhead says that the Christian activists are buoyed up by their success in battering British Airways into submission over the wearing of a cross.

“Now they are coming for gay rights,” he continued.  “It is essential that there is a massive resistance to this religious pressure or the government may cave in to it.

“I sincerely hope that the gay community can mount a more effective fight back than BA did.”

Yesterday a coalition of religious leaders took out a full page advertisement in The Times demanding that the government insert a clause into the regulations that would allow opt outs on grounds of conscience or religious belief.

Mr Broadhead said that this could mean almost anything. “Everyone has a conscience - does that mean that it would be OK for the BNP to disregard the regulations because they have a conscientious objection to homosexuals? The advertisement is deceitful, misleading and manipulative.”

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Birmingham, Vincent Nichols, and the Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, have both threatened that their churches will withdraw co-operation with the government in the provision of services such as night shelters and youth clubs.

“This is blackmail – pure and simple” Mr. Broadhead said.  “To threaten to withdraw services from needy people in order to get your way politically is appalling.

“I hope that the Government will respond by withdrawing all the money they pay to these organisations to run these services,” he concluded.

Hanne Stinson, the chief executive of BHA targeted Archbishop Nichols.

“How dare the Archbishop claim the moral high ground,” Ms Stinson fumed. “At the same time as he demands the right to discriminate against gay people [he] condemns stem cell research that would alleviate human suffering.

“What upsets the Archbishop so much” she continued, “is not that our secular society is immoral, but the fact that most people’s morality no longer depends on religious authority.”

An Ipsos MORI poll published earlier this month  revealed that a large proportion of the British population adopt a humanist approach to morality, without any reference to religious authority.  

65% said that what is right and wrong ‘depends on the effects on people and the consequences for society and the world’, against only 13% who said what was right and wrong was ‘unchanging and should never be challenged’.

And 62% of Britons believe that ‘Human nature by itself gives us an understanding of what is right and wrong’, against only 27% who said ‘People need religious teachings in order to understand what is right and wrong’.

“The very moves that the Archbishop attacks, for example seeking to alleviate human suffering through the encouragement of stem-cell research, are part of what makes our society a moral society.,” Ms. Stinson said.

“Just as most of the British public do not derive their own morality from religious authorities, so a large number of them believe that our Government should not derive its policy from religious leaders, many of whom do not even represent the beliefs of their followers,” she added.