Tyson Fury on Homosexuality

by peter

December 9, 2015

Tyson Fury won the WBA heavyweight title a couple of weeks ago, but what weight should we place on his moral views? 85,000 people have signed an online petition calling for his name to be removed from nominations for the sports personality of the year. He is also being investigated by Greater Manchester Police for a hate crime – the crime being that he stated the following views. There seem to be three issues here:

Tyson Fury provoked controversy by articulating supposedly biblical views on morality. Was he justified in speaking?

1. Free speech – can you say what you believe even if this is what most people reject?
2. Discrimination and hatred – what might be interpreted as ‘stirring up homophobia’?
3. Religious basis of beliefs – can we believe what a major church teaches?

What did Tyson actually say?

‘There are only three things that need to be accomplished before the devil comes home. One of them is homosexuality being legal in countries, one of them is abortion and the other is paedophilia. Who would have thought in the 50s and 60s that those first two would be legalised? When I say paedophiles could be made legal, it sounds crazy. But if I had said to you about the first two being made legal in the 50s, I would have been looked upon as a crazy man. If I would have told you 120 years ago that a 1,000-ton aeroplane is going to fly through the sky, a piece of steel, that would have been considered ludicrous. People can say, ‘You are against abortions, you are against paedophilia, you are against homosexuality’, but my faith and my culture is based on the Bible.’

Let’s analyse Tyson’s argument.

1. The Bible says abortion, homosexual behaviour and paedophilia are wrong. Depending which verses you take and how you interpret them, this is arguably the case (although having said that, I’m hard pressed to think off hand of a verse on paedophilia – that may be more a deduction from the Bible’s argument for family life).
2. I believe in the Bible as the word of God. Not really an argument, more a presupposition. It is used in religious systems to justify all kinds of things, and to stop the rest of us arguing against this view. Take Islam, for example. If the Qur’an was dictated by the angel Gabriel to the prophet Muhammed, then it is difficult for me to apply source critical methods to prove it is actually a cultural construct.
3. The Bible says these things are of the devil. Arguably true of homosexuality, depending how we interpret the letter to the Romans, but not so much the other two. Paul writes in Romans 1:

¹⁸The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, ¹⁹since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. ²⁰For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

²¹For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. ²²Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools ²³and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

²⁴Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. ²⁵They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator – who is for ever praised. Amen.

²⁶Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. ²⁷In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. (Romans 1:18-27)

4. Therefore I have to say, these three things are of the devil.

Let’s put Tyson’s argument in a different form. There are only three things that need to be accomplished before the devil comes home. Women going around with heads uncovered, women having power over men, and premarital sex being widely practised. If a woman had gone to church a hundred years ago not wearing a hat, she would have been thrown out. A hundred years ago women weren’t even allowed to vote, and sex before marriage was widely condemned as a serious moral failing. It’s all evidence that society is subject to the wrath of God.

Well I suppose that there is a view here that someone might hold. But it seems to illustrate one fact about morality: if it rests on absolutes, the absolutes don’t lie here. A careful reading of Romans 1 will show us, I think, that even Paul would agree with me – as Paul is against Levitical legalism. The source of absolutes lies somewhere else, not in legalism, but in principles of justice, equality and respect. Here is where I really disagree with Tyson – I think his view of the source and nature of morality is flawed and could be used to justify all sorts of injustices, as it has unfortunately done in the past, to religion’s shame.