U.K. Street Preacher Arrested for Anti-Gay Sermonizing

A UK street preacher has been arrested under a law meant to prosecute violent soccer fans for hooliganism. Police say that Dale Mcalpine was loudly proclaiming anti-gay sentiments in a shopping district; Mcalpine says that he was merely handing out leaflets and engaging passers-by in conversation. Onlookers worry that Christians are being prosecuted for proclaiming what they see as Biblical truths.

Mcalpine says he had a quiet one-on-one conversation about sin with a woman who had been passing by the spot where he had set up a stepladder outside a cell phone store, reported U.K. newspaper The Daily Mail in a May 1 article. During that chat, he told the woman that the Bible condemns as sinful an array of behaviors, including homosexual contact. However, says Mcalpine, he did not proclaim any anti-gay speech as he preached loudly from his perch on the stepladder.

"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," Mcalpine told the media. The policeman was Sam Adams, a GLBT community liaison officer who is gay himself, reported the Mail. Adams told Mcalpine that people had complained about the street preacher, and warned him against hate speech. "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," recounted Mcalpine, going on to say that Adams "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," said Mcalpine. "It wasn't a loud or aggressive conversation."

Later on, Adams left the scene--but several other officers arrived and placed Mcalpine under arrest under an anti-hooliganism law. He was taken in, booked, and held for seven hours.

A May 4 article at U.K. newspaper The Telegraph said that Mcalpine was arrested under the 1986 Public Order Act, a law passed to combat soccer fans' rioting in the streets after matches. Mcalpine was arrested under provisions that make it a crime to cause "harassment, alarm, or distress," the article said.

"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," said Mcalpine, who contests the police claim that he was loudly uttering anti-gay speech. "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."

Added Mcalpine, "If you are preaching hate and calling on people to harm others, it is right that is against the law. 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."

The incident was condemned by Christians who say that they are now being persecuted for giving voice to their beliefs.
"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," attorney Neil Addison, who specializes in religious law, told the press.

The Christian Institute's Mike Judge said that Mcalpine 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." The Christian Institute is supporting Mcalpine's legal needs, the article said.

"He hands out leaflets, he says his piece and then he leaves," Rob Logan, assistant manager at the cell phone store outside of which Mcalpine was preaching, told the press. "He is not aggressive or threatening. He is gentle."

U.K. supporters of the faith-based right to speak out against gays have pointed to other incidents in recent years to bolster their claim that they are now the ones being subjected to persecution. In 2006, a man named Stephen Green was charged for distributing fliers at a Pride event in Cardiff.

In another incident, a grandmother, the wife of a reverend, wrote to local authorities to protest a gay Pride event she had witnessed. 67-year-old Pauline Howe, who lives near Norwich, England, condemned the Pride parade as a "public display of indecency" and "offensive to God," in her letter, going on to make a number of broad claims, including the assertion that same-sex intimacy had "contributed to the downfall of every empire" and "was a major cause of sexually transmitted infections."

In her letter, Ms. Howe declared that, "It is shameful that this small but vociferous lobby should be allowed such a display unwarranted by the minimal number of homosexuals."

Local officials sent a pair of Norwich policemen to investigate, since the letter raised concerns about hate speech. In a letter to Ms. Howe, county official Bridget Buttinger explained that, "The content of your letter has been assessed as potentially being hate related because of the views you expressed towards people of a certain sexual orientation," and advised Mrs. Howe that, "Your details and details of the contents of your letter have been recorded as such and passed to the police."

The visit from two officers came later, and the policemen clarified for Ms. Howe that her choice of wording made her missive appear to be an example of hate speech.

However, Ms. Howe insists that her invective was not hate-based. "The officers told me that my letter was thought to be an intention of hate but I was expressing views as a Christian," she told the media. The Christian Institute saw the visit from local authorities as a possible example of religious freedoms and free expression being trampled.

A similar case in which a married couple in Lancashire professed their Christian beliefs in anti-gay language and were visited by the police resulted in a payout to the couple.

Christian Institute spokesperson Mike Judge told the press, "People must be free to express their beliefs--yes, even unpopular beliefs--to government bodies without fear of a knock at the door from police," and went on to assert that, "It's not a crime to be Christian but it increasingly feels like it."

The Norwich police said that they were simply doing their job in looking into the letter, stating, "We investigate all alleged hate incidents. In this instance the individual concerned was visited by officers, the comments discussed, and no further action was taken."

British GLBT equality advocate organization Stonewall saw the visit from police as having gone too far, given the letter's content. Said Stonewall executive director Ben Summerskill, "Clearly her views are pretty offensive but nevertheless this [response] is disproportionate."

In the United States and elsewhere, similar arguments are made that religious liberties and full legal equality for GLBT citizens are bound to clash. Religious individuals who believe that scripture condemns homosexuality chafe that anti-discrimination protections might mean that they are breaking the law when they speak out against gays. Such possible conflicts between faith and law are seen by some people of faith as further reason to deny GLBT individuals and families full equality before the law.

At the blog Rightly Concerned, which is run by the anti-gay American Family Association, a May 3 posting pointed to Mcalpine's arrest and declared that, "we will have to choose between homosexuality and religious liberty, because we can't have both." Added the posting, "Every advance of the homosexual agenda comes at the expense of religious freedom. Every piece of turf taken by homosexual activists is turf taken from those who believe in freedom of conscience, speech and religious expression."

Under current hate crimes law in the U.K., people of faith are free to declare that gays are "sinful." An attempt to eradicate the religious exemption for hate speech was defeated by British lawmakers last year.