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By: Nigel Robinson

A Scottish minister has compared gay clergy to Nazis

"Such people will not inherit the kingdom of God"

The Reverend Ian Watson of the Church of Scotland is in the forefront of opposition to Scott Rennie, an openly gay minister. As reported earlier by Pride Life, Mr Rennie is a divorced father of one who intends to move his male partner into the manse if he takes over his post at an Aberdeen church.

A motion – or overture – has already been lodged to prevent him from taking his post, and the Church’s General Assembly is due to discuss Mr Rennie’s appointment next week.

The overture reads: “The Church shall not accept for training, ordain, admit, re-admit, induct or introduce to any ministry of the Church anyone involved in a sexual relationship outside of marriage between a man and a woman.”

On his blog, the Reverend Watson reproduced a sermon he had given at KirkmuirhillChurch in Lanark. In the sermon he compared opposition towards gay clergy to France’s failure to stand up to the Nazis in 1938.

Mr Watson said: “[Hitler] guessed correctly that the French had no stomach for a fight. If only they had, then the tragedy of a Second World War might have been avoided,”

He went on to say: “To claim that the homosexual lifestyle is worthy of a child of God; to demand that a same-sex partnership be recognised as on a footing with marriage; to commend such a lifestyle to others is to deny that Jesus Christ is our only Sovereign and Lord. It is to turn the grace of God into a licence for immorality,

“Such people will not inherit the kingdom of God. And therefore they must be resisted . . .

“Have we learned nothing from history? Remember Hitler and the retaking of the Rhineland. He got away with it. No one stopped him. So next it was Austria, then Czechoslovakia, and then Poland and only then world war.”