Leading luvvies lambaste disgusting Catholic bigot

I'm about to get quite angry, as the headline probably suggests, so you have been warned. This is a tale of two of the UK's leading gay actors, Ian McKellen and Simon Callow, who have laid into the revolting bigot Bishop Joseph Devine, a leading light in the Catholic Church in Scotland.

In a speech earlier this year, this abomination of a man "singled out the decision to award McKellen an honour from the Queen as an example of the dangers of the increasing power of the gay lobby", according to the Sunday Times.

This reeking gobbet of slime said during a speech at St Aloysius college in Glasgow, "In this New Year’s Honours list, actor Ian McKellen was honoured for his work on behalf of homosexuals. A century ago Oscar Wilde was locked up and put in jail." (The knighthood was actually for McKellen's work for the performing arts, but the reasons have probably become a bit blurred in people's minds since then, maybe because he was later made a Companion of Honour for his work for drama and equality, although that wasn't until the 2008 New Year's Honours.)

The implication – considering that it is couched as criticism, not as delighted wonder at how enlightened we have become since the 1890s – seems to be that McKellen should be given two years' hard labour, too, or at the very least should never have been honoured, and that no gays should be honoured.

I suppose we ought to crucify people, too, for being pains in the arses of the authorities. That's a much older tradition than putting people in the slammer for what they do with their private parts.

Devine, sinking as low as anyone can sink without chewing into the subsoil, also accused homosexuals of aligning themselves with minority groups to present themselves as people under persecution, citing their attendance at Holocaust memorials.

What?

In a speech to a dinner for the gay lobby group Stonewall, which McKellen helped to found, the Lord of the Rings and Shakespearian actor said, "From the pulpit, homophobia is preached by some arrogant religious leaders who think their beliefs are superior to our inborn and, some would say, God-given nature.

"The Bishop of Motherwell [Devine] addressed his flock and told them how appalled he was that I had received an honour and that 100 years ago I would have been imprisoned like Oscar Wilde. He feels that the Roman Catholic Church is beleaguered in some way.

" 'We neglect the gay lobby at our peril,' he said. And when a mother asked him what he would do if his child said he had a mission to be gay, the Bishop of Motherwell replied, sympathising with the mother but not the child, 'I would try to handle it with a degree of compassion but would not tolerate it.' "

A "mission to be gay"? What sort of person would couch it like that? I'm willing to bet it's your own word, Mr Devine, not that mother's. And what is a "mission to be gay"? Did you have a mission to be male instead of female, to be whatever height you are, have whatever girth you have. Did you to have a mission to have two feet and two testicles? (No, scrub that last bit. People like you don't have testicles.)

Callow, meanwhile, in an interview with the Sunday Times, says senior religious figures could not accept the changing attitudes in society towards gay relationships.

"The bishop is in my view a profoundly ignorant and stupid man in his views," he said. "If he finds it offensive that gay people want to celebrate those gay people who died in the Holocaust – which was a large number of people – then he’s also profoundly unchristian.

"The church is shocked by how quickly attitudes have changed. All churches have thrived on prejudice, it’s a means of keeping people under their control and I think they are really shocked at how quickly the world has moved on, especially as it isn’t the world they would like it to be, so they cite biblical incidents as being the word of God."

The appalling Devine has since said there was no evidence he had ever preached homophobia and he insisted he used McKellen’s honour to illustrate the "power and the strength of the homosexual lobby", as if Gandalf McKellen had gone in there and said, "Hey, I'm gay, now give me a K!"

"I was certainly not saying that homosexuality is a crime which requires prison, nothing of the kind," he said.

Of course it was "of the kind", you excuse for a human being. You made an immediate comparison with Oscar Wilde. What else was that but saying gays ought to go to jail?

He goes on, "The focus was on the progress made by homosexuals rather than the suggestion that there should be any draconian laws. It is all very well people in the gay lobby demanding rights, but they are riding roughshod over the rights of others in the process."

Oh, and whose rights are those? The rights of dim-witted morons like you to deny gays and lesbians the rights others have: equality in employment and services, the right to form relationships, and so forth? Is that what you mean by "riding roughshod"?

"What I am saying is not superior," this execrable twassock continues, "it’s just sticking up for 2,000 years of Christian values."

Well, Mr Devine, I'm sure most Christians in this country would tell you to stuff your 2,000 years of values right up your cassocked jacksie if you are an example of those values in action. Only the fundies would lower themselves as far as you have stooped, and they should be made to share a cell with you if ever you do the two years' hard labour I wish you would suddenly find yourself faced with.

Now go and hang your malicious head in shame.