The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

April 8, 2009

Tony Blair tells the Pope: you're wrong on homosexuality

by Ruth Gledhill

The Times Online

Speaking to the gay magazine Attitude, the former Prime Minister, himself now a Roman Catholic, said that he wanted to urge religious figures everywhere to reinterpret their religious texts to see them as metaphorical, not literal, and suggested that in time this would make all religious groups accept gay people as equals.

Asked about the Pope's stance, Mr Blair blamed generational differences and said: "We need an attitude of mind where rethinking and the concept of evolving attitudes becomes part of the discipline with which you approach your religious faith."

The Pope, who is 82, remains firmly opposed to any relaxation of the Church's traditional stance on homosexuality, contraception or any other area of human sexuality. He has described homosexuality as a "tendency" towards an "intrinsic moral evil".

Conventional wisdom was not necessarily wise, [Blair] said. ?It can be wrong and it can be just a form of conservatism that hides behind a consensus.... [I]t?s amazing how the same arguments in favour of prejudice crop up again and again and again.?

He also claimed that the mood was changing in evangelical circles, which have been long been anti-gay ? the source of the dispute that has taken the worldwide Anglican Communion to the brink of schism.

Referring to his contacts with evangelical groups in the US and elsewhere through the foundation, he said: ?I think there is a generational shift that is happening. If you talk to the older generation, yes, you will still get a lot of pushback, and parts of the Bible quoted, and so on. But if you look at the younger generation of evangelicals, this is increasingly for them something that they wish to be out of ? at least in terms of having their position confined to being anti-gay.?

[Entire story, here.]