why Farage is wrong to back the preacher in Colchester

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:02]I I want to talk about Farage and the preacher, the street preacher, uh that Farage has protected. And at first reading, I was quite supportive of the street preacher.

[00:00:16]But actually looking into it, I realized the man is a prejudiced bigot. And a Christian, of course, has a right to quote scripture.

[00:00:26]A council must be careful before restricting religious expression. That much matters, but Farage went further.

[00:00:32]And according to the Guardian, he told Stephen Claydon he was fully on your side after Claydon had preached homosexuality as an abomination and linked it to hellfire.

[00:00:42]The issue is not only volume, nor only public order. It is the public branding of gay people as vile, filthy, wicked, and destined for damnation, which is not actually what the Bible says. And uh and and I I want to go through this, but I I also point uh would would point you to a video I made sometime called gay, what would God say? So, do do check that out.

[00:01:04]But it's um the the there are a number of verses in the Bible which are misinterpreted by the prejudiced and by bigots.

[00:01:14]Just as there are a number of verses, a similar number of verses, I think sort of six or a number of sura in the Quran which are ambiguous at best, but certainly not decisive. The the the hadiths and the commentaries in the hadiths in Islam and the commentaries in Christianity uh are much more decisive, and one has to say say that very clearly. But the uh the primary texts in both cases, w- i- if you examine them very carefully, do not necessarily mean what people think they mean.

[00:01:53]And Farage wants the easy costume of liberty. He wants the tricorn hat, the trumpet, the YouTube thumbnail, but liberty is not a megaphone for cruelty.

[00:02:02]Free speech protects expression, it doesn't oblige a political leader to applaud every expression. And the mature position is simple, defend lawful preaching, reject dehumanizing language.

[00:02:14]Faris failed because he did the first and avoided the second.

[00:02:18]And the minister is wrong because the scripture is being handled badly.

[00:02:23]And the six so-called texts are not a simple divine press release against gay people. Genesis 19 is about violence, rape, humiliation, and inhospitality.

[00:02:33]Ezekiel 16 says Sodom's sin was pride, excess, and neglect to the poor, uh not homosexuality. Leviticus belongs to the holiness code, uh the boundary law bound up with ritual purity, patriarchy, and Israel's separation from surrounding nations. Romans 1 is about idolatry, excess, and pagan disorder. 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy used contested Greek terms, especially arseno uh uh arsenokoitai and malakoi, which do not map neatly onto modern faithful loving same-sex relationships.

[00:03:08]So, when a preacher says, "The Bible says homosexuality is an abomination," he is not merely quoting scripture, he is flattening scripture.

[00:03:16]He is taking ancient texts about domination, cultic practice, purity, exploitation, and pagan excess and turning them into a loudspeaker attack on gay people walking through Colchester. That is not exegesis, that is theological fly-tipping, and it misses Jesus.

[00:03:32]Jesus doesn't organize his ministry around sexual denunciation. He speaks most fiercely against hypocrisy, cruelty, legalism, pride, greed, and religious self-display. The people he condemns most sharply are not outsiders, they are the pious who use holiness as a weapon.

[00:03:49]Thirdly and finally, the deeper issue political Christianity without Christ, and this is where Farage and the minister meet. One wants a culture war prop.

[00:04:01]The other wants a pulpit without pastoral care. Between them, Christianity becomes less a gospel of grace and more a public address system for resentment. And that is why also why Danny Kruger's LGBT supporting phrase was so revealing. Hansard records Peter Swallow objecting after Kruger warned of an appalling Hamas supporting LGBT supporting nationalist party. Swallow, slight uh rightly uh said, "Support for LGBT rights is fundamental to British parliamentary values." This is the trick. Put LGBT supporting next to something sinister, let association do the dirty work, smile, then claim moderation. But supporting gay people is not extremism.

[00:04:49]Treating gay citizens as equal citizens is not a decadence. It is law, decency, and Christian neighbor love.

[00:04:56]The CPS guidance also recognizes hostility based on sexual orientation as a serious matter in hate crime contexts.

[00:05:04]That doesn't abolish free speech. It shows society has learned something basic. Words aimed at protecting groups do harm when they become public humiliation, intimidation, or hatred.

[00:05:16]So, the answer is not to ban the Bible or the Quran. The answer is to read Bible, to read the Quran properly. The answer is not to silence Christians. The answer is to ask whether this sounds like Christ.

[00:05:30]Does this sound like the word of God?

[00:05:31]The answer is not to let Farage play martyr manager.

[00:05:35]For every inflammatory preacher with a megaphone, the answer is to say calmly and firmly, "Free speech is precious, but cruelty is not courage. Scripture is sacred, but misreading it loudly doesn't make it holy. And if Christianity is to speak in the public square, it should sound less like a threat and more like an invitation from Jesus. It should sound uh like like like it is. Um it's I I I find it terribly terribly disturbing when uh characters like um like like like like like Farage or Ann Widdecombe turn to the Bible to defend the indefensible.

[00:06:28]Um and Ann Ann Widdecombe, for example, when she was talking about conversion therapy, said something quite astonishing, quite um quite shocking. She said, "The fact that we now think it is quite impossible for people to switch sexuality doesn't mean that science may not yet produce an answer at some stage."

[00:06:57]And Farage said, "These things are matters of conscience. I don't think they're matters for party leaders to support or condemn."

[00:07:06]Uh And then uh he he also he he's he he backed Ann Widdecombe. He said Ann Widdecombe is a devout Christian, there's nothing wrong with that in my opinion. If we start to attack and condemn people because of religious conscience, we are going to cause all sorts of problems, not just with Roman Catholics, but with many many others of Muslim faith who have even stronger feelings on this subject than Ann Widdecombe.

[00:07:32]Uh what's intolerant, he goes on to say, is the pack mentality decides that a certain group of people have a view that is not acceptable in the mainstream, and they should be hounded out of all public office for having a different point of view.

[00:07:45]So, in many ways in many ways Farage sounds quite reasonable, but in fact I think it is support of this particular preacher shows that he's not really that reasonable. He Neither the preacher nor Farage, nor I'm afraid Ann Widdecombe, have really looked at these texts. If they had they would be significantly more um cautious in in what in what they say.

[00:08:21]Uh He Farage also defends Boris Johnson who was um who who has occasionally used appalling language like tank-topped bum boys. And Farage says, "Well, Boris is a guy who's earned his living being a very outspoken journalist, and that's why he uses phrases like that. I may not approve of it all but I also think that if we start going down the road of saying people saying this or that is unacceptable if we want to bar him from public life because of some of the unsavory things he's written, then I think we might finish up with nobody in public life at all."

[00:08:58]Well the standard of the standard of behavior should be excellence.

[00:09:05]And then we look then we look down and we and we are we we we are um tolerant of people who fall by the wayside.

[00:09:15]We are we are tolerant and tolerance is the tolerance and in fact acceptance is the message of particularly the New Testament. So, it becomes extraordinary that there is so much aggression attached to these verses particularly from Timothy and Romans.

[00:09:39]Um that may not mean quite what they uh what what what these um misled preachers would like them to mean.

[00:09:51]Um And uh and and of course one has to look at David and Jonathan, Naomi and Ruth and and and and ask, is is is there absolutely no um evidence of homosexuality in the biblical texts themselves? And I think I think we have to be very cautious about uh about saying this is a um uh the the this is a text which is uh which would conform to the sort of prejudiced standards of this particular preacher that Farage likes.

[00:10:30]I As I say, please look at my video. It's quite long. It's called Gay, What Would God Say? And it goes through these texts. And I was quite surprised when I looked at them in detail.

[00:10:46]Every single of these every single one of these texts, which each one looks as if it is quite negative. Each one when placed within its within the context of its writing, when placed within the context of the understanding that was had by the early church and by the contemporary readers is not at all as prescriptive as negative as it is interpreted by many of these um prejudiced bigoted individuals.

[00:11:24]Including Farage.