Speaking about the unspeakable

But, as Nick Morrison discovers, its director has a surprising revelation.

IT wasn't the most promising prelude to an interview. When I rang Colin Hart to ask if he would speak to me about his work, he sounded distinctly dubious, his suspicions based on the assumption that I only wanted to talk about one thing. If that subject predominated, "I will be quite unco-operative," he told me. "I'm not interested in defining ourselves by that one issue." Eventually, he agreed to see me, on condition we discussed other issues as well.

Unfortunately, it is largely over that one issue that the Christian Institute has achieved its national prominence. From Section 28 to gays in the armed forces, from lowering the age of consent to allowing gay couples to adopt, the Institute has been at the forefront of attempts to halt the tide of gay rights.

It has not always been successful, but that has not stopped its campaigns achieving a disproportionate level of media coverage for an organisation run from a nondescript townhouse in the centre of Newcastle.

But, as well as the attention, its methods have also come in for more than their fair share of criticism, most notably last year when the Charity Commission launched an inquiry - still ongoing - after the Institute issued an adoption card, in the form of a donor card, bearing the legend "In the event of my death, I do not want my children to be adopted by homosexuals".

But while it may be the issue that has garnered them most attention, for the institute's director Colin Hart it seems gay rights is bordering on the unspeakable.

So it is that I spend the first 45 minutes of the interview studiously avoiding bringing up the subject. Instead, we discuss how the Institute was founded - after a campaign to ensure Christianity was the main faith in religious education lessons - and the other campaigns it has fought, including opposing attempts to make divorce easier.

Colin, who left his teaching job to become the Institute's first director in 1990, says it was born out of a feeling that the traditional Christian voice was not being heard where it mattered. Widely seen as an evangelical group, it draws its members and supporters from across the denominations, with an adherence to Biblical teachings its touchstone.

But the unmentionable is hanging over us, and eventually it is Colin who brings it up, as we talk about the success or otherwise of his campaigns.

"The most effective campaigners - and I have a lot of respect for them and I think they're very able - are the gay campaigners," he says. "Their particular causes seem to be ones which are very much the flavour of the month. We respond to that, but it is not our idea to have debates on the age of consent.

"We want to argue our case on a whole lot of other issues, but this is the one the media wants to latch on to."

Now we've got on the subject, it will prove difficult to let it go.

"I think gays know what we believe, and they don't like it," he tells me. "There is this distinction, which Christians always make, between temptation, and disposition and urges, and actions. Experiencing same sex attraction is not wrong, in the same way that a married man who experiences an attraction for another woman who is not his wife is something that naturally happens, but acting on it is wrong."

This has always seemed a somewhat absurd distinction to me: no one chooses to be gay but it seems unfair to condemn them to a life of celibacy as a result, but Colin is satisfied with this 'love the sinner, hate the sin' approach.

His work has brought him face to face with Angela Mason, former director of gay rights group Stonewall, as well as the more militant Peter Tatchell.

"I spend a lot of time reading to try and understand where they're coming from," Colin says. "I think what they want is to feel confirmed in their sexuality, as they would say, and they want the law to do that, but even if they get everything they want, they won't actually get what they want by changing the law. What they want is for people to say homosexuality is the same as heterosexuality, which it patently isn't."

On adoption, he says the Institute's position is that children need a mother and father, and there are enough heterosexual couples wanting to adopt that there is no need for gay couples adopting. After much pressing, he says he objects to gay couples adopting on moral grounds as well. He says they're no longer issuing the adoption card, but does not regret it.

"I know it has upset gays, but we have tried to raise the argument in a way that surely even homosexuals could appreciate. The point of the card was to raise concerns that grandparents could be sidelined in favour of homosexual couples, such is the political correctness in some local authorities," he says.

He says the argument against lowering the age of consent for gay men to 16 was largely to protect vulnerable children from being exploited by predatory older men, the stereotype so beloved of anti-gay campaigners, and that for a 16-year-old, choosing to be gay is a big decision, even though there's not a lot of choosing going on.

"You are really cutting yourself off from some of the greatest pleasures of family life," he says.

He says he doesn't hate gays, just what they do. He is familiar with accusations of homophobia, and that he is providing succour for gay-bashers, but rejects the former and says gays can be victims of crime just as heterosexuals can, even though not many people are beaten up because they're straight.

But it's only when I'm thinking about winding up the interview that I ask about his own private life. I assumed he was married, and was surprised to find such a staunch campaigner for family life is not.

"Marriage is a good thing, it would be great to be married, but there are no developments. I would not say there were," he says. But surely it would be an advantage to be married, giving his arguments the strength of experience?

'It could be for some people - it is just a personal thing. Probably not being married does make you think about things and evaluate them and strengthens your belief in what you are doing. I would have to say this work here is very important and that is what I'm committed to."

He says it would be difficult to combine his job - and the amount of travelling he does - with having a family, but you can't help but feel there is a certain amount of self-delusion going on here. He's 39, and it sounds as though he's given up on getting married. "You have to be realistic," he says sadly, and if it came to a choice between marriage and the job I don't know which would come first, despite his protestations of devotion to the cause.

With his pre-interview warning still sounding in my head, I take the plunge and ask if he's ever felt attracted to a member of the same sex. "I think a lot of people are not married and I think that is fine, and fewer people are getting married than ever before, and I think it is a very sad thing when you look at the figures of people living alone," he says.

But has he ever felt attracted to a member of the same sex?

"I would be delighted to be married, but you can't do everything in life. I certainly enjoy what I'm doing, but it is a responsibility and I don't think I could do what I do at the moment if I were married."

I ask the question a third time.

"Part of the argument about the age of consent is that boys, when they're young, can have feelings of being attracted to the same sex, and I did. I don't think it is particularly unusual, and I think it is a phase you go through and I did go through that phase." He says this happened "certainly in junior school", but adds: "I can't reme mber the details of it. I think people do go through a phase. If you look at the largest study that's been done, something like 20 per cent of men say they have been through such a phase."

I try to get him to tell me about his experience of this phase, but finally the shutters go up. "I think I've probably said everything I need to say about that," he says, and I can't say I wasn't warned. He goes on to say that while the Institute has been very open in the past, that may change, partly because Stonewall is running out of issues. As he has been so honest, it's only fair to say that, as a gay man, while I find many of his views insulting, I can't fault his openness, nor his genuine belief in what he's doing.

As I leave, he hands me a collection of the Institute's booklets. I thank him for his time - a promised one-hour interview has turned into two - and he tells me he doesn't need publicity, particularly negative publicity. When I say that this article will look at the Institute's work as a whole and not just the one issue, he replies with weary resignation: "I don't think it's going to be very positive." I open my mouth to reassure him, but realise there's nothing I can say, so instead I just shrug my shoulders and leave.