BBC actor John Barrowman has launched a blistering attack on the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland for defending the traditional definition of marriage.
Earlier this month the Scottish Government, led by the Scottish National Party, launched a consultation on whether to redefine marriage but the proposal has met fierce opposition from senior figures within the Church.
Now Mr Barrowman, who plays the main character in BBC One’s Torchwood, said that he was “horrified” that church groups were “prepared to ruin lives”.
Evil
He added: “That’s not being Christian at all. In fact, I think it’s evil. Being gay is not, as they claim, against the laws of nature. I was born this way.”
The actor, who has been in a civil partnership since 2006, made the comments after the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, the Archbishop of Glasgow and the Bishop of Paisley warned against meddling with the definition of marriage.
Philip Tartaglia, the Bishop of Paisley, has warned that the governing Scottish National Party does not deserve the support of Scotland’s 800,000 Roman Catholics because of its proposal to redefine marriage.
Trust
Commenting on the proposal Bishop Tartaglia said that “such a government does not deserve the trust which the nation – and including many in the Catholic community – has shown in it.”
And Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, warned that redefining marriage would have “huge implications” for Scottish society and schools.
He branded the proposal as a “grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right”, and warned that it would deprive children of the opportunity to have a mother and father.
Normalising
He added: “There is no question, that normalising gay marriage means normalising homosexual behaviour for public school children.
“In November 2003 after a court decision in Massachusetts to legalise gay marriage, school libraries were required to stock same-sex literature; primary school children were given homosexual fairy stories such as King & King; some high school students were even given an explicit manual of homosexual advocacy”.