Harriet Harman, minister for women and equality, said: “Today marks the fourth anniversary of civil partnerships in England and Wales and I would like to congratulate the 35,000 lesbian and gay couples who have so far registered their relationship.

Who is the minister for men as a matter of interest? Maybe the minister for equality could tell us why there isn’t one?

“I’m proud that we were one of the first countries to introduce civil partnerships and that our new Equality Bill will provide important new protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans people, creating a fairer and more inclusive society.”

“Proud?” More of that pride stuff that leadeth to destruction. I wonder if Ms Harman really does think her tinkering with relationships and nature has created a fairer society.

That’s that one off my chest. The next story is the opposite situation: Uganda’s proposed death penalty for certain crimes involving sodomy.

Another story connected to this horrified me when I read the headline: Christian leader supports death penalty for gays.

Setting the scene, the Pink News ’staff writer’ calls Stephen Green’s ‘Christian Voice’ group “a far right Christian group” in the very first sentence and a “Christian extremist group” in the second.

What he is actually supporting, however, is not a blanket rounding up of homosexuals for shooting, but the death penalty for ‘aggravated homosexuality’. I do approve of severe punishment for these heinous crimes, but I cannot say I agree with capital punishment. A Christian Voice press release explains,

Peter Tatchell’s extremist gay rights organisation ‘Outrage’ protested outside the Ugandan High Commission today against a proposed new law criminalising homosexuality in the country.

They said, wrongly, that it was a law ‘to execute and jail gays’.

In fact, the death penalty in David Bahati MP’s ‘Anti-homosexuality Bill’ is only for ‘aggravated homosexuality’; which is knowingly infecting others with AIDS, sodomy with minors and homosexual rape. Promoting homosexuality would however be punishable by a jail term.

Although it is far from clear that the Bahati Bill will be enacted, there is a groundswell of opinion in Uganda against the cultural imperialism of Western secularism.

It gets much more interesting and put in perspective when you consider the following (from Christian Voice),

On 15th Nov President Museveni indicated he was sympathetic to Bahati’s concerns, although he did not endorse the bill, “I hear European homosexuals are recruiting in  Africa ,” he said, in an address to a youth awards banquet, warning against ‘foreign’ corrupt practices. However, he added “We used to have very few homosexuals traditionally. They were not persecuted but were not encouraged either because it was clear that is not how God arranged things to be.”

American pro-family activist Scott Lively is opposed to the death penalty for sodomy but observes there used to be a pro-homosexuality law in Uganda under which Christians were executed:

‘By official count 22 young men were executed under Uganda ’s law on homosexuality,’ he writes. ‘The law in question required that all men and boys in Uganda be willing to submit to the homosexual seduction of its ruler, King Mwanga. When Ugandans began to convert to Christianity in the 1880s, a group of Catholics, led by Charles Lwanga, refused to allow themselves to be sodomized by the King. Enraged, King Mwanga had them torturously bound, marched 37 miles and then roasted alive in a fire pit. The date of their execution was June 3rd, 1886, and is today a national holiday commemorating Uganda’s rejection of homosexuality and commitment to Christian values.’

‘It should be no surprise, therefore, that modern Ugandans are very unhappy that homosexual political activists from Europe and the United States are working aggressively to re-homosexualize their nation. Ugandan citizens report a growing number of foreign homosexual men coming to their country to turn desperately poor young men from the slums into their personal houseboys, and that some girls in public schools have being paid to recruit others into lesbianism. Foreign interests have exerted intense pressure on Uganda ’s government to compromise its laws regarding sexual morality, often using their control over foreign aid funding for leverage.’

Crucially, homosexuals were not persecuted, but they were not encouraged.

You can understand why the Ugandan government desperately wants to deter homosexual behaviour. They understand the damage that vice causes to society and so they want to deter outside influences normalising slack personal sexual morality. Young locals are already being recruited by foreign homosexual men.

While the Ugandans care about family values, the Chinese have set out on the road to destruction by allowing the country’s first official gay bar in the southwestern province of Yunnan.

Last year China’s Ministry of Health implemented its first ever national programme to curb the spread of HIV/AIDS among gay men.

The programme marked a subtle new phase in the one-party-state’s attitudes towards homosexuality since sodomy was decriminalised in 1997: No approval, no disapproval and no promotion.

That’s how it happened here, starting in the late Sixties. First decriminalisation, then approval and finally promotion.

The bar, which was founded by Dali HIV/AIDS charity worker Zhang Jianbo, was given 120,000 yuan (£10,000) of financial support from the government.

The words slope and slippery spring to mind.

China’s health ministry warned earlier this month that homosexual transmission of HIV/AIDS was gaining pace.

And promoting homosexuality is going to do what to this trend?

So there we must end our little sojourn through the Pink News. Proof if it was needed that the world has gone bonkers and that common sense and decent family values need to make a swift return. One day will be the final day. The Lord will have said, enough is enough; the wheat and tares have grown together and today is the time of their separation: the wheat to everlasting joy and the tares to everlasting torment. But the world laughs because all that matters is sex, gossip, sport and who has won the coveted Christmas Number One spot.