Western Cape premier Peter Marais may respect their constitutional rights, but he still believes homosexuals are immoral and unchristian.
After a valiant bid to repair his battered image this week, Marais managed to put his foot in it again on Saturday night at a religious service in Cape Town.
Speaking to about 3 500 people at His People Church in Goodwood, the New National Party premier said vicious smear campaigns had become the tools of those who posed as defenders of democracy and high morality.
”Criticism of lifestyles which are in conflict with Christian morality, are stifled and attacked as being insensitive and undemocratic,” he said. His statement was a clear dig at the negative reaction to his claim last weekend that a gay clique in the Democratic Alliance was behind sexual harassment allegations against him.
”They want to attack my image as a Christian by attaching sleaze to me so that this will make my argument against homosexuals less credible,” he said last Sunday.
Faced with a barrage of criticism, including a thinly-veiled rebuke from his coalition partner in the province, the African National Congress, Marais tried to repair the damage on Tuesday by saying homosexuals were part of the ”colourful rainbow nation”, and that he respected their constitutional right to freedom of sexual orientation.
He told the annual conference of His People Church on Saturday that negativity and ”being critical of each other” was growing in leaps and bounds at great cost to nation-building. ”People are negative about everything, negative about their country, negative about sport, about the future and negative about each other, even negative about whether God’s teachings are still valid in a changing world.
”When last did we read a newspaper or listen to the news, without hearing the words, death, murder, rape, abuse or, hear or read that even more lies and insinuations has been conjured up against someone in an attempt to sway public opinion?”
He was deeply concerned that at the root of all of this was a serious shift in morality and a breakdown in family values.
”The ugly form of a moral and spiritual decline has swept in through the front door like an unwanted gatecrasher bringing with it the chill of a new order. And most Christians seem cowed into silence.
”Those like me, who publicly take a stand, are made to pay a heavy price — a price I should never have been made to pay in a decent society which respects the truth and moral values of Christians.”
Marais, who is alleged in a lawsuit filed by NNP colleague Audrey van Zyl to have rubbed her suggestively, declared his love for her and told her how he had sex with his wife Bonita in the kitchen, said promiscuity appeared to be the new way of life of the younger ”and not so young” generation.
”It’s supposed to be ‘hip’ to… share your God-given body and the temple of God outside wedlock. This is a breeding ground of Aids.”
He called on the churches to go with him on a new crusade, to become champions of the poor and ”warriors against immorality”. In an aside hardly likely to endear him to his Muslim coalition partner in the province, African National Congress Western Cape leader Ebrahim Rasool, Marais added: ”If Christianity don’t become a way of life, we’ve lost. It’s a way of life, every hour, every day.”
Marais also explained that God had helped him against his foes, and because of his lack of fear, God had made him first mayor of the Cape Town unicity, with a budget of R9,2-billion.
He said he kept on speaking out fearlessly, and God made him premier of the whole province with a budget of R13,3-billion.
”My budget is now so big, I’m so scared somebody will fire me again,” he said.
Marais, who has denied Van Zyl’s allegations and has threatened a R5-million countersuit for defamation, compared himself to the biblical Joseph, who Potiphar’s wife sought to lure into seduction, and was falsely accused of succumbing.
Earlier, introducing Marais to the congregation, the head of His People Church, pastor Paul Daniel, described the premier as ”a man for whom I have the greatest respect”, and someone ”well-known for his strong Christian stance and principles”.
A gay lobby group is planning a three-day protest outside Marais’ offices at the beginning of June to call for his resignation. – Sapa