Faith Under Fire....
UK Preacher arrested after saying he believes homosexuality is sin
'My freedom was taken away on the hearsay of someone who disliked what
I said'
London Daily Mail
Last updated at 11:59 PM on 1st May 2010
A Christian street preacher has been arrested and charged with a
public-order offence after saying that homosexuality was sinful.
Dale Mcalpine was handing out leaflets to shoppers when he told a
passer-by and a gay police community support officer that, as a
Christian, he believed homosexuality was one of a number of sins that
go against the word of God.
Mr Mcalpine said that he did not repeat his remarks on homosexuality
when he preached from the top of a stepladder after his leafleting.
But he has been told that police officers are alleging they heard him
making his remarks to a member of the public in a loud voice that could
be overheard by others.
dale mcalpine
Dale McAlpine in the church where he worships
Mr Mcalpine, 42, who earns about £40,000 a year in the energy industry,
was arrested and taken to the local police station in the back of a
police van after preaching in the Cumbrian town of Workington on April
20.
After seven hours locked up in a cell, he was charged with using
abusive or insulting words or behaviour contrary to the Public Order
Act 1986.
Mr Mcalpine – who has delivered open-air sermons and handed out
leaflets in Workington for years, and has never been in trouble with
the police – said the incident was one of the worst moments of his life.
‘I felt deeply shocked and humiliated that I had been arrested in my
own town and treated like a common criminal in front of people I know,’
he said.
‘My freedom was taken away on the hearsay of someone who disliked what
I said, and I was charged under a law that doesn’t apply.’
He said he was not homophobic and has gay friends, but he feels
compelled by his faith to urge people to abandon all types of sins so
they can seek salvation.
‘If you are preaching hate and calling on people to harm others, it is
right that is against the law,’ he said. ‘But I would never do that. If
we have a free society, I should be allowed to preach the Gospel as
generations have before me.’
adams
'Distressed': PCSO Sam Adams in uniform
Christian campaigners said last night they were alarmed that the police
seemed to be using legislation originally introduced to deal with
violent and abusive rioters and football hooligans to curb free speech.
Neil Addison, a barrister and expert on religious law, said: ‘People
should be able to express their opinions freely as long as their
conduct is reasonable. In fact, it is part of the duty of the police to
protect free speech.’
Mike Judge, a spokesman for the Christian Institute, which is
supporting Mr Mcalpine, said: ‘Dale is an ordinary, everyday Christian
with traditional views about sexual ethics.
'Some people will agree with him, others will disagree. But it’s not
for the police to arrest someone just because others may disagree with
what is said.’
Mr Mcalpine’s ordeal began when he and two other Christians went to the
pedestrianised shopping precinct in the centre of Workington.
He took a small stepladder and a rucksack of Christian leaflets and met
full-time preacher Keith Bullock from Carlisle and a friend from his
evangelical church in Workington.
Mr Bullock began speaking from the stepladder outside a mobile phone
shop close to
a number of stores and coffee bars.
Mr Mcalpine said he and his church colleague handed out to passers-by
leaflets explaining the Ten Commandments or offering a ‘ticket to
heaven’.
He recalled: ‘It wasn’t very busy, but within about five minutes I
noticed two police community support officers in fluorescent waistcoats
and blue peaked caps watching from about ten feet.’
Mr Mcalpine said a woman came up to him and they became engaged in a
debate about his faith, during which he says he recited a number of
sins referred to in 1 Corinthians in the Bible, including blasphemy,
fornication, adultery, drunkenness and homosexuality, as well as
talking about repentance and salvation.
He and the woman were standing close to each other and he said he did
not raise his voice.
Mr Mcalpine says that as the woman left, one of the two officers, PCSO
Sam Adams, approached her and had a brief chat before walking towards
him. Mr Mcalpine asked Mr Adams if everything was OK.
According to Mr Mcalpine, Mr Adams said there had been complaints and
warned him that if he made racist or homophobic remarks he could be
arrested. Mr Mcalpine said: ‘I told him I was not homophobic but
sometimes I did say that the Bible says homosexuality is a crime
against the Creator, but it was not against the law to say this.
‘The PCSO then told me he was gay and he was the Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual, Transgender liaison officer for the police. ‘I said, “It is
still a sin”, and our conversation ended. It wasn’t a loud or
aggressive conversation.’
adams
Sam Adams on his myspace page
Mr Adams has been a member of Cumbria police’s LGBT staff association
and last year represented the force at the Gay Pride festival in
Manchester, marching in the parade with a police dog named Whistle.
On the social networking site MySpace, he describes his orientation as
gay and his religion as atheist.
Soon after midday, Mr Mcalpine took over from Mr Bullock on the
stepladder and says he preached for about 20 minutes.
He said he mentioned drunkenness and adultery, and that religions such
as Buddhism, Islam and even Roman Catholicism were not the way of
salvation, but did not speak about homosexuality.
During the sermon he was heckled by a middle-aged man who berated his
colleague Mr Bullock, asking what right he had to preach that
drunkenness was wrong.
At that point Mr Adams, who Mr Mcalpine said had been talking on his
radio, intervened, and the man left.
A few minutes later three regular uniformed policemen arrived and Mr
Mcalpine said one asked him if he had made homophobic remarks.
Mr Mcalpine said he told the officers that while he was not homophobic,
he did believe homosexuality was a sin and there was no law against
saying so.
‘I knew that I hadn’t done anything wrong so I told myself to remain
calm, but it was very intimidating,’ he recalled.
‘I was then arrested, read my rights and put into the back of a marked
police van. When we got to the station they emptied my pockets, took my
mobile and my belt and my trainers, so I was in my socks.’
Mr Mcalpine was put in a cell and asked for his Bible. ‘I read it and
sang hymns like Amazing Grace as loudly as I could,’ he said.
Police took his fingerprints, a palm print, a retina scan and a DNA
swab. He eventually saw the duty solicitor and was interviewed by an
officer in a room equipped with a table, four chairs and a recording
device.
Mr Mcalpine was told that the two PCSOs had alleged that they heard him
shouting that homosexuality was a sin, which had distressed them and
members of the public.
He was eventually charged under Sections 5 (1) and (6) of the Public
Order Act 1986 and released on bail on the condition that he did not
preach in public.
At a preliminary hearing on Friday in Workington magistrates’ court, Mr
Mcalpine pleaded not guilty and he is now awaiting a trial date. The
two PCSOs are expected to attend as witnesses.
Shoppers in Workington were bemused by what had happened to Mr Mcalpine.
Rob Logan, the assistant manager of the O2 mobile phone store near
where Mr Mcalpine preached, said he had no complaints.
‘He hands out leaflets, he says his piece and then he leaves,’ said Mr
Logan. ‘He is
not aggressive or threatening. He is gentle.’
The Rev Arthur Bentley-Taylor, 68, vicar of the Emmanuel evangelical
church where Mr Mcalpine worships, said:
‘As far as I am concerned, this is about free speech. If we arrested
everybody who said something we found offensive, everyone would be in
prison.’
The Public Order Act 1986 has been used by the police in a number of
similar cases, including that of Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang, the
Christian hoteliers cleared earlier this year of insulting a Muslim
guest at their Liverpool hotel.
In 2002 pensioner Harry Hammond was convicted under Section 5 of the
Public Order Act. When preaching in Bournemouth, Mr Hammond held up a
sign saying: ‘Stop Immorality’, ‘Stop Homosexuality’, ‘Stop
Lesbianism’, ‘Jesus is Lord’.
In 2006, police arrested and charged Christian campaigner Stephen Green
for handing out leaflets at a Gay Pride festival in Cardiff. The case
was dropped.
Last night Cumbria police said there was no one available to comment on
Mr Mcalpine’s case.
How long until Christians are blackmailed for daring to speak?
By PETER HITCHENS
Revolutions do not always involve guillotines or mobs storming palaces.
Sometimes they are made by middle-aged gentlemen in wigs, sitting in
somnolent chambers of the High Court.
Sometimes they are made by police officers and bureaucrats deciding
they have powers nobody knew they had, or meant them to have.
And Britain is undergoing such a revolution – quiet, step-by-step, but
destined to have a mighty effect on the lives and future of us all.
The Public Order Act of 1986 was not meant to permit the arrest of
Christian preachers in English towns for quoting from the Bible. But it
has. The Civil Partnerships Act 2004 was not meant to force public
servants to approve of homosexuality. But it has.
The Sexual Offences Act of 1967 was not meant to lead to a state of
affairs where it is increasingly dangerous to say anything critical
about homosexuality. But it did.
And the laws of Britain, being entirely based upon the Christian Bible,
were not meant to be used by a sneering judge to declare that
Christianity had no higher status in this ancient Christian
civilisation than Islam, Buddhism or Hinduism.
But it has come to that this week.
How did it happen that in the course of less than 50 years we moved so
rapidly from one wrong to another?
Until 1967, homosexuals could be – and were – arrested and prosecuted
for their private, consenting, adult acts.
This was a cruel, bad law that should never have been made. It led to
blackmail and misery of all kinds.
Those who repealed it did so out of humanity and an acceptance that we
need to live in peace alongside others whose views and habits we do not
share. No such generous tolerance is available from the sexual
revolutionaries.
Now, as the case of Dale Macalpine shows, we are close to the point
where a person can be prosecuted for saying in public that homosexual
acts are wrong.
And officers of the law, once required to stay out of all controversy,
get keen official endorsement when they take part in open political
demonstrations in favour of homosexual equality.
We have travelled in almost no time from repression, through a brief
moment of mutual tolerance, to a new repression. And at the same time,
the freedom of Christians to follow their beliefs in workplaces is
under aggressive attack.
Small and harmless actions, offers of prayer, the wearing of
crucifixes, requests to withdraw from duties, are met with official
rage and threats of dismissal, out
of all proportion.
How long before Christians are being blackmailed by work colleagues,
for daring to speak their illegal views openly?
Daily the confidence of the new regime grows. The astonishing judgment
of Lord Justice Laws last week, in which he pointedly snubbed Lord
Carey, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, and mocked the idea that
Christianity had any special place in our society, is a warning that
this process has gone very deep and very far.
The frightening thing is that it has not stopped, nor is it slowing
down. What cannot be said in a Workington street will soon be unsayable
anywhere.
And if Christianity has officially ceased to be the basis of our law
and the source of our state’s authority (a view which makes nonsense of
the Coronation Service) who, and what – apart from the brute power of
the manipulated mob – is to decide in future what is right, and what is
not, and what can be said, and what cannot?
This process, if not halted, will lead in the end to the Thought Police
and the naked rule of power.
Read more:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1270364/Christian-preacher-hooligan-charge-saying-believes-homosexuality-sin.html#ixzz0mke6rcfq