A Christian street preacher was arrested and put in jail by a homosexual police officer on 20 April 2010 for allegedly saying that homosexuality is a sin in the eyes of God.
Dale McAlpine, 42, who has preached the Christian Gospel in Workington, Cumbria for many years, was charged with causing ‘harassment, alarm or distress’ after a homosexual police community support officer (PCSO) overheard him reciting a number of sins referred to in the Bible, including idolatry, blasphemy, fornication, drunkenness, and same sex sexual activity.
Mr McAlpine said he did not mention any aspects of homosexuality while delivering a sermon from the top of a stepladder, but admitted telling a passing shopper that he believed it went against the word of God.
When Mr McAlpine was handing out leaflets explaining the Ten Commandments or offering a ‘ticket to heaven’ with a church colleague, a woman approached and engaged him in a debate about the Christian faith. During the conversation, he says he quietly listed homosexuality among a number of sins referred to in the Bible, 1 Corinthians.
After the woman walked away, she was approached by the PCSO who spoke with her briefly and then walked over to Mr McAlpine and told him a complaint had been made, and that he could be arrested for using racist or homophobic language.
Police officers are alleging that he made the remark in a voice loud enough to be overheard by others and have charged him with using abusive or insulting language, contrary to the Public Order Act.
The PCSO then said he was homosexual and identified himself as the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender liaison officer for Cumbria police.
The preacher was taken to the police station in the back of a marked van and locked in a cell for seven hours. He said the incident was among the worst experiences of his life.
‘I felt deeply shocked and humiliated that I had been arrested in my own town and treated like a common criminal in front of people I know,’ Mr McAlpine said.
‘My freedom was taken away on the hearsay of someone who disliked what I said, and I was charged under a law that doesn’t apply.’
Mr McAlpine has pleaded not guilty and was released on bail provided he agreed to cease preaching.
A number of commentators expressed their dismay at what has happened as another attempt to stamp out Christianity in the United Kingdom.
Melanie Phillips, an Orwell Prize winning journalist and author, wrote:
‘... so we have the oppressive and sinister situation where a gentle, unaggressive Christian is arrested and charged simply for preaching Christian principles.
‘It would appear that Christianity, the normative faith of this country on which its morality, values and civilisation are based, is effectively being turned into a crime. Surreally, this intolerant denial of freedom is being perpetrated under the rubric of promoting tolerance and equality – but only towards approved groups.
‘Never has George Orwell's famous satirical observation, that some people are more equal than others, appeared more true,’ she added.
She says that the Cumbrian arrest comes hard on the heels of last week's ruling by Lord Justice Laws in the case of Gary McFarlane, who was dismissed as a Relate counsellor because he refused to give directive advice to homosexual couples on sexual relationships.
(See the CCFON report)
Cristina Odone, a journalist, novelist and broadcaster, wrote that the case of Mr McAlpine is just the latest in a list of Christian victims of the new inquisition.
'Fuelling the inquisitors is a vicious secularism that allows no tolerance for views based on Christian values,' she wrote.
Peter Hitchens, a columnist and author writing for Mail on Sunday, says Britain is undergoing a revolution conducted by ‘police officers and bureaucrats deciding they have powers nobody knew they had, or meant them to have’.
‘The Public Order Act of 1986 was not meant to permit the arrest of Christian preachers in English towns for quoting from the Bible. But it has. The Civil Partnerships Act 2004 was not meant to force public servants to approve of homosexuality. But it has.
‘The Sexual Offences Act of 1967 was not meant to lead to a state of affairs where it is increasingly dangerous to say anything critical about homosexuality. But it did.
‘And the laws of Britain, being entirely based upon the Christian Bible, were not meant to be used by a sneering judge to declare that Christianity had no higher status in this ancient Christian civilisation than Islam, Buddhism or Hinduism.
‘But it has come to that this week,’ he wrote.
‘We have travelled in almost no time from repression, through a brief moment of mutual tolerance, to a new repression. And at the same time, the freedom of Christians to follow their beliefs in workplaces is under aggressive attack.’