Changing Attitude Spins Disinformation on Homosexuality to Anglican Communion

News Analysis

By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
1/3/2008

The Church of England's unofficial homosexual organization, Changing Attitude, wants you to believe that there are literally millions of homosexuals in the Anglican Communion whose voices are not being heard because of homophobic Attitude by African Anglican evangelicals, particularly Nigeria, as well as from other western orthodox anti-homosexual Anglican activists.

The Rev. Colin Coward, Director of Changing Attitude, recently released figures he alleges show that if the Anglican Communion has a total membership of 75 million, then 5% or 3.75 million are engaging in homosexual activity. When challenged by VOL to demonstrate the validity of these figures, Coward wrote back, "No proof, just a provocative figure."

Provocative, indeed. Coward said, based on a conservative estimate, that every society is comprised of approximately 5% lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered peoples. He determined that there are nearly 4 million homosexuals inside the Anglican Communion!

The largest random sex survey ever conducted, reported that only 1.4% of adults engage in homosexual behavior. Analyzing a 2003 Canadian Community survey of 121,300 adults, Dr. Paul Cameron, PhD, and Kirk Cameron, PhD, told attendees of the Eastern Psychological Association Convention that 2% of 18- 44 year olds, 1% of 50 year olds, and only a third of a percent of subjects 60+ consider themselves homosexual.

In a study titled "Federal Distortion Of The Homosexual Footprint", the two men say homosexual activity is much more common among younger adults with older homosexuals ceasing to be sexually active or dead. Recent reports from Scandinavia indicate that the life expectancy of homosexuals is 20+ years shorter than that of heterosexuals.

"No one can say that this statistic is 'the bedrock truth,'" Paul Cameron said, "but even with attempts to increase the percentage of active homosexuals - which Statistics Canada appears to have done by reporting only the results of those under the age of 60 - the 1.4% is a figure that has to be taken very seriously.

"The US government survey of 12,381 adults in 1996, reported that 1.3% of men and 1.1% of women under the age of 60 said they'd had homosexual sex in the last 12 months. It also found few older homosexuals. The oldest male who engaged in homosexuality was 54 and the oldest female+ 49. So it appears that homosexuality is a young person's activity - one that may contribute to an early death."

Paul Cameron, a reviewer for the British Medical Journal, the Canadian Medical Association Journal, and the Postgraduate Medical Journal, has published over 40 scientific articles on homosexuality. The EPA is the oldest regional Psychological Association in the United States. The full report can be accessed at http://www.earnedmedia.org/frireport.htm

The figure of 75 million Anglicans has recently been called into question by Anglican Mainstream which maintains that there are only 55 million active Anglicans in the communion -- not the much ballyhooed figure of 75 or 78 million most often quoted in the secular press. The Church of England claims some 24 million baptized Anglicans out of a population of 60 million, but less than a million practice their faith on any given Sunday.

The other truth is that Changing Attitude is not about changing Attitude at all, it is about changing the minds, hearts, thinking, theology and teaching of the church which long ago settled that sexual relations shall be restricted to men and women in wedlock with celibacy as the only alternative. By a subtle use of the word "Attitude" it predisposes the reader to think, with a slight change in thinking, that the mind of the communion will change with it.

By its own reckoning, Changing Attitude England has only 600 members, Nigeria 3,000 (this has never been verified or confirmed by the Anglican Province of Nigeria), and Integrity (USA) 2,000, making a total of 5,600 members.

The notion that there are some 3.75 million closeted homosexuals in the Anglican Communion, waiting for a prophetic word or epiphany from New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson at Lambeth later this year to liberate them from the homophobic clutches of Nigerian Primate Peter Akinola, is patently absurd.

The spin is not just confined to statistics. Recently, Coward went on record saying that Nigeria's House of Bishops is divided over GAFCON, the upcoming conference of orthodox Anglicans in the Holy Land. "It has been humiliating in particular for the leader of the GAFCON Primates and Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria. His own bishops voted by a significant majority to attend the Lambeth Conference when he was proclaiming vigorously that none of them would be present. The conscience of the Nigerian House of Bishops is divided."

"Not true at all," roared CANA Bishop Martyn Minns, an American bishop ordained by Akinola to lead orthodox Anglicans in the U.S. wishing to separate from The Episcopal Church. "I was there ... they were enthusiastically unanimous in their support for the stand that Akinola has taken."

Coward spends much of his time at Anglican gabfests pushing his pansexual agenda. He was publicly delighted, at Dar es Salaam in Feb. 2007, to learn that the number of primates who refused to take Eucharist with Mrs. Katharine Jefferts Schori, US Presiding Bishop, was down to 7, a significant drop from the 17 or so who refused to take communion with Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, when some 37 Primates met in Dromantine, Ireland, in 2005.

He and his homosexual counterparts in the U.S. believe they are winning the culture wars on sexuality issues. They use every occasion to cajole, manipulate and present themselves for photo ops, such as the one taken in Tanzania with Mrs. Jefferts Schori, Coward and his Nigerian counterpart Davis Mac-Iyalla, while the media was specifically warned that no contact would be allowed with the Primates and a "ring of steel" was put around them .

For its part, the Anglican Church of Nigeria has disowned the self confessed gay activist, Davis Mac-Iyalla, insisting in a statement issued in Abuja that Mac-Iyalla ceased to be a member of the communion in 2003.

The statement, signed by its Director of Communications, Rev. Canon Akintunde Popoola, said that results of extensive searches confirmed that Mac-Iyalla cannot be traced to any particular congregation.

"He is not registered in any of our more than 10,000 local parishes as of the past two years. None of our more than 6,000 priests recognize him as an active member in any of their parishes," the statement said.

Mac-Iyalla has constantly presented himself in the country's media as the victimized homosexual who was chased out of the Anglican Church because of his sexual orientation, but the Church has refuted that claim alleging that Mac-Iyalla, a former staffer of the Diocese of Otukpo till 2003, bolted with large sums of money including worker salaries.

While his homosexual orientation is not in doubt, the Church insists that the man still has to answer police in Otukpo over his alleged offences. The disclaimer alleges that Mac-Iyalla used the false notion of his supposed victimization in the Anglican Church to defraud unsuspecting victims.

Mac-Iyalla has criticized the recent campaign by the Primate of Church of Nigeria, the Most Rev. Peter Akinola, against acceptance of homosexual practice in the Church.

Last November, the group organized a controversial national convention which the organizations website claimed was attended by about 800 people. This later turned out to be false.

Mac-Iyalla and his group, in a statement purportedly released at the end of the meeting, warned the Anglican Church to "stop colluding with cultural repression and discrimination against lesbians, gays and bisexual people in all parts of the world."

In another attempt to smear orthodox Nigerian Anglicans over homosexuality, Mac-Iyalla’s group accused the bishop of Uyo in Nigeria of uttering homophobic statements which were later shown to be false, putting the Archbishop of Canterbury in the embarrassing position of saying he was relieved that the stories were false, while offering no apology for his remarks.

Such reports are fostered by Changing Attitude to demonstrate the faux homophobia of Nigerian Anglicans.

Events reached embarrassing levels when Changing Attitude in Nigeria lead a campaign to prevent that country from hosting the Commonwealth Games in 2014. This effort caught Church of England patron Bishop John Gladwin off guard with some calling for him to step down from his leadership of that organization.

Davis Mac-Iyalla was touring the United States and the UK as part of the listening process recommended by the Windsor Report, when it became obvious to people in his diocese that Gladwin's support of Changing Attitude had a clear and specific agenda to change the Church of England's teaching on human sexuality.

Changing Attitude's relentless pursuit of sodomite acceptance, its access to General Synod where they display and hold fringe meetings, and its relationship with the CofE through its patrons (many of whom serve as bishops, senior clergy and lay people in the church and on church councils, such as the Crown Nominations Committee and the Archbishop's Council) only reinforces that a weak doctrine of human sexuality now being pushed on the church might well win the day.

It will do so, of course, at the expense of bringing about an inevitable schism, not only in the Church of England but in the wider Anglican Communion, a schism that will begin in the Holy Land this summer and end, quite possibly, with two communions before the decade is out.

At least from an orthodox perspective, Mr. Coward has brought about the much needed clarity we have all longed for. The truth that no man can serve two masters is now clearly on the table for all to see. "Choose ye this day…"

END