Tim Farron’s very personal statement has to be respected, but he is wrong (Farron quits as Lib Dem leader over views on gay sex, 15 June). He found himself impaled on a host of issues he found extremely sensitive but it was completely unnecessary. It is a Liberal tenet that the state has to be secular and can only be governed by reason and logic. No religion can impose its beliefs on an unwilling populace and hope to sustain them by force. Politicians have to form policies that respect the citizen’s individual wishes and desires, and are based on political values and by determining the laws that provide the optimum basis for society’s future.
Any other basis, including religious faith, cannot gain the willing consent of the wider public. To govern on this recognition of the fallibilities of civil society is not to deny one’s faith but to recognise the legitimate distinction between personal faith and political and human reality.
Paradoxically, it is also in the interest of religion that the state should be secular: it is the only way that the right to practise and to proselytise one’s faith can be guaranteed. A state based on religion – any religion – is a recipe for repression and civil unrest.
Michael Meadowcroft
Leeds
• Is it impossible, as Tim Farron feels, to lead “a progressive, liberal party” while holding “faithfully to the Bible’s teaching”? If progressive political beliefs conflict with the Bible, then Farron should explain the conflict, trumpet the Bible (I assume “God’s word” trumps liberal policy documents) and persuade his party of the error of its ways. If there is no conflict, but people wrongly think there is, then ought not Farron to use a leadership position to correct that error?
I write as humanist and atheist. I prefer to see religious beliefs open to scrutiny in the political world rather than tucked away in safe houses, resting unchallenged by an outside world.
Peter Cave
London
• Why wasn’t Tim Farron (and other candidates) being asked questions about climate change, our arms exports to the Middle East, and coping with a world-wide refugee crisis. All these matters are of far greater importance to the electorate and the world (and God, too, I am sure) than who does what in bed.
Maureen Panton
Malvern, Worcestershire
• I first knew Tim Farron as Liberal Democrat party president greeting shy first-timers to conference. The open welcome and down-to-earth directness I found then, and the speeches I came to appreciate - choppy, and with pithy sound bites and barbs - come from a man whom Archbishop Justin Welby and other church leaders have praised as “honourable and decent”. Undoubtedly they stemmed from Tim’s Christian soul. He led with integrity.
His personal beliefs which he had come to feel were an obstacle to leading a British political party, have now caused him to resign as party leader. Since the likely contenders to replace him are all coalition ex-ministers, it is likely that an overdue review of the controversies (economic policy at home, and overseas, the consequences of intervention in Libya) alongside the many positives in the Cameron-Nick Clegg government’s record, will be prompted by the arrival of the new Lib Dem leader.
I regret the loss of Tim and find it a cruel irony that the man whose resignation from the home affairs team appeared to have prompted Tim’s own as party leader is Lord Paddick. It was Lord Paddick’s courageous work as chief superintendent in the Met fifteen years ago which prefigured the Lib Dem’s manifesto policy on legalising and taxing the regulated sale of cannabis: a policy adopted in many western countries and states.
Nick Watts
Kettering
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters
