Rob James says that he disagrees with the Archbishop of Canterbury (A Good Word: It’s right to speak out against small boats bill, Tenby Observer, May 19) or allowing the blessing of LGBT relationships but agrees with him in being more understanding in our attitude towards small boats crossing the channel.
Alongside his usual blast of bigotry towards LGBT people, he fails to notice that some of the people in the small boats that head towards us are people escaping from precisely the sort of bigotry over their sexuality that Rob James supports.
In April, Uganda passed a law criminalising people identifying as LGBT, a policy that’s fuelled by a crudely literal reading of the small selection of biblical texts allied to social prejudice. Some have fled to Wales for safety. It’s our lack of bigotry, our commitment to being rational about religion and our long history of fighting for individual freedom against irrational prejudice that attracts many people to the UK.
So the archbishop has got the connection right and Rob James has got it, unsurprisingly, wrong.
Steve Carr,
Saundersfoot