I see the moral vocal minority have succeeded in getting an application for a sex shop turned down in Worthing. Again.

Now I don’t particularly care one way or another if Worthing has a sex shop or not.  Apart from anything else I don’t even live there or even visit very often.  I just don’t like the precedent it sets – with council committees swayed by the few dozen religious maniacs who turn up at a meeting rather than the tens of thousands who really are not bothered either way, or even the large number who actually want a sex shop but are not prepared, for obvious reasons, to get up and say so.  And there must be a large number – you have to assume that the applicant has a business plan and did some market research.

The Argus quotes a local pastor as saying:

If anyone calling themselves a Christian says it [sex] can be enjoyed outside of marriage, they need to re-examine the words of the Jesus Christ careful.

Well… if they are not enjoying it, they must be doing it wrong.  He also says:

Worse, there is a clear link between pornography, especially “hard-core” and sexual crime and paedophilia

Maybe there is, and maybe there isn’t.  Even if there is a link it may not be causal.  The pastor may be suffering from post hoc fallacy.  It may just be that there is a common cause, like that someone predisposed towards one sort of deviant behaviour is also predisposed towards another.  I think that sexual crime existed long before widely-available pornography.

If you are looking for a decent ‘clear link’ there is always the link between religion and war, or the link between religion and genocide, or the link between religion and… well sex crimes and paedophilia if the Sunday tabloids are to believed, which they aren’t.

Don’t get me wrong: I know a lot of religious people.  I like them and get along with them.  I like to go along to interfaith events to understand what they are up to.  What they don’t do is tell me what I can and cannot do and I don’t tell them either.  Maybe they do things differently in Worthing?