Sexual freedom
From Rev D. Nadin Sir: It was refreshing to read the comments by Humphry Berkeley (Natural and Unnatural, May 11). With the recent freedom to express one's sexuality and to regard sexuality as a valid topic of conversation in respectable 'polite' company, it is becoming more and more obvious that we have to re-examine commonly accepted assumptions as to what is and what is not natural. Ignorance has dominated opinion on such matters and nowhere is this more the case than with homosexuality on which the Church and indeed society in general has maintained a conspiracy of silence.
The Church in general has in the past made moral judgements in an area where it was both misinformed and prejudiced not by the gospel of acceptance but by the pressures of society. Last year a group of Christians of all denominations grouped together in order to help the Church to face up to the necessity of re-examining its theology of sexuality in general and homosexuality in particular. This organisation REACH 27, Blackfriars Road, Salford M3 7AQ is primarily an educational ginger group within the Church. It seeks to inform the Church, to help homosexual Christians both by rescuing them from isolation and by facing them with the ethical claims of the gospel (it believes that homosexual Christians can be both fully Christian and fully homosexual) and to encourage the Church to seek to remove the discrimination against homosexuals both in the Church and in society as a whole.
A great deal of work has to be done but it may be of encouragement to many of your readers to learn that there is already a small group of reformers at work in the Church.
Denis Nadin
9 Bishopsfield, Harlow, Essex Sir: While I agree with much of what Ian Harvey says (May 18), his implication that homosexuals are a race apart who require 'integrating' needs challenging.
There is in fact a continuum for heterosexual to homosexual, as most of us who have had experience of living in one-sex institutions for any length of time will confirm. If people who are predominantly homosexuals would stop looking upon themselves as a race apart they might find that the world was a kinder place than they had hitherto supposed and (who knows?) they might find it easier to form more socially acceptable attachments to persons of the opposite sex.
G. Cho w dharay-Bes t 174 Clay Hill Road, Basildon, Essex.
Sir: "An extremist campaign for the total overthrow of existing codes of morality ... would lead to a backlash (and thus defeat efforts to integrate homosexuals)" writes Ian Harvey correctly. Really, I don't fancy a society with all codes of morality overthrown, mainly because I am a prude, also prim and proper. I would make a lovely, little old maid, for someone, were I maid and lovely. In the coming liberation of society will it be our turn to feel the sting of intolerance and the bite of bigotry? I suppose so. So I do wish "freedom" would slide off and leave us prisoners alone.
• Thomas W. Gadd Alexandra Court, Woodborough Road, Nottingham
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