Beeliner, what specifically was the BBC's gaffe in this case? Your post doesn't make it clear.

If I am a vile bigot for expressing my views, then Mr Obama, hero of the "liberal left" must also be a vile bigot.

I'm afraid that doesn't follow, Ake. I'm not particularly a fan of Obama's but I detect no homphobia in anything he's said or done. In particular I accept that it is possible to argue against same-sex marriages without being homophobic.

Homosexuality is a condition, just as manic depression (bipolar disorder) is a condition. Because bipolar disorder is passed on genetically, advances in genetic science could soon allow it to be eradicated from humankind. But though I don't mind it being controlled I would not want to see it eradicated. Likewise, unlike Ake, I would hate to see homosexuality eradicated in the unlikely event of that becoming a possibility.

Both conditions contribute enormously to the richness of human life, evidenced by the fact that both are disproportionately represented in the world's intellectual elite and in the creative arts.

Much of the homophobia in Africa is among uneducated people who have been exploited and manipulated for generations by missionaries, their own shamans, witch doctors, etc. Such hostility is founded in ignorance. But there can be no such excuse for Ake's prejudice and Joe's head-in-the-sand "neutrality" (witness Joe's yearning for that odious so-called compromise of "don't ask, don't tell"). For me both attitudes are utterly inexcusable.

As an aside, I have to say it beggars believe that a church which has put so much money and effort into the abuse of children would presume to lecture any democracy on sexual morality.