TROTSKYISM was not the first ideological trend to turn hair-splitting sectarianism into an art form; Protestantism got there the best part of 400 years ago. There may be little tangible dispute between Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Congregationalists over what they actually believe about God, but differences on church governance are another matter entirely, as students of the English civil war will be well aware

Indeed, after reading theologian Alister McGrath’s recent book ‘Christianity’s Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution, a History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-first’, the parallels strike me as only too marked. Given that Marxists regard ideologies as more-or-less developed expressions of class interest, the idea is perhaps worth further exploration

Essentially, Protestantism began as a left dissident internal faction within Catholicism, as Trotskyism did within the Comintern, both defining their identity in opposition to a powerful Other.

Although Martin Luther generally figures in most accounts as the Trotsky figure, McGrath points to numerous precursors prior to 1517, including such currents as those around Wycliffe, Hus and the Waldensians, who were already thinking along similar lines. Just as Bordiga developed his brand of left-communism outwith the Fourth International, so thinkers such as Zwingli invented their own formulations of Protestantism independently of Lutheranism.

And make no mistake, some of the early Protestant groupings were both insurrectionary and communist in orientation. The most obvious case in point is John of Leyden, who instigated an Anabaptist communist city-state in Münster in 1534.

It is also noticeable that Protestantism as a political basis for the state spread through a process analogous to the way most Trots envisage the development of world revolution; from its initial bases in Wittenberg and Zürich, Protestant positions were eagerly taken up by Geneva and the Netherlands and more reluctantly by England, from there crossing the Atlantic to what was to become the USA.

Protestantism and Trotskyism are both famously fissiparous, perhaps because of their common lack of a Pope-like central authority figure to which to appeal as an arbiter in disputes. With low barriers to entry in either market, sects tend to proliferate on both the far left and the born again wing of Christianity. Sadly, cult-like behaviour is not uncommon within either milieu.

Another affinity is bitter doctrinal disputes over issues that seem incomprehensible to outsiders, such as the ‘real presence’ of the body of Christ in Holy Communion, premilleniarian dispensationalism, or the class nature of the USSR. None of these questions is ultimately capable of resolution.

As a result, we often get resort to scriptural authority to prove a point, and a marked determination to push ideas to logical conclusions, irrespective of common sense.

Finally, there can be no doubt that Protestantism was historically progressive. Continued Catholic dominance would have held science at the pre-Copernican stage. The advent of Newtonian physics - and all that flows from that breakthrough - could have been held back for centuries.

In that sense, we have a lot to thank Luther for, irrespective one's verdict on his ideas. As someone who still has not written off the revolutionary socialist project, I hope that future historians will one day be able to say as much for the Old Man.

CATHOLICISM is strongly opposed to gay adoption, and Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor – until recently Archbishop of Westminster – proved especially keen on making sure that New Labour did not forget that fact.

During the debate over the Sexual Orientation Regulations two years ago, he wrote to every cabinet minister, stressing that Catholic agencies ‘would not be able to recruit and consider homosexual couples as potential adoptive parents’.

Of course, all groups in civil society have every right openly to state positions on issues of current controversy. But given the ideological thrall with Catholicism holds for some leading New Labour figures, and its electoral influence in many working class constituencies, it is a lobby more influential than most. The Archbishop’s argument ran like this:

We believe it would be unreasonable, unnecessary and unjust discrimination against Catholics for the Government to insist that, if they wish to continue to work with local authorities, Catholic adoption agencies must act against the teaching of the Church and their own consciences.

True, Catholic agencies at that point handled just 200 adoptions a year, some 4% of the total. At first glance, such a contribution might appear relatively unimportant. But check the small print; this figure included a full one-third of those children judged ‘difficult to place’.

In other words, many of those saintly enough to undertake the unimaginably difficult task of caring for the severely disabled are moved to do by Christian faith. I am glad such people exist, and they deserve society’s grateful admiration.

Undoubtedly, there will be gay Catholics that wish to follow this example. But for the leaders of the religious group to which they adhere, the dogma comes first. Catholicism lost this battle, and has chosen to cut ties with several of the adoption agencies it founded, rather than be forced to find kids homes with homos.

Such a stance is not motivated purely by some nebulous nominal attachment to family values. Clearly there is a nasty subtext a work. The implicit accusation is that two men - or two women - cannot be trusted as adoptive parents, for fear that they might perpetrate unspeakable horrors on their charges.

Yet the headlines from Ireland today are dominated by the findings of a nine-year investigation into child abuse in the Catholic church from 1940 to the present day. Hundreds of priests were involved, and thousands of children, mainly young boys, were their victims. The documentation runs to 2,500 pages.

Nor is Ireland an isolated case. Let’s look at a few examples from the US. Archdioceses in Boston, Dallas, Los Angeles and Louisville have all had to pay tens of millions of dollars to settle lawsuits from hundreds of people claiming to have been abused by priests. I could go on to list instances from Australia, Britain, Canada and doubtless elsewhere, too.

In sum, Catholic clergy have abused children in its care on an industrial scale, in country after country around the world. Yet Catholic leaders refuse to in attempts to place kids in loving environments if that means countenancing gay adoption. Unless it can square that circle, it remains open to question whether it should be involved in adoption work in the first place.

BEING A former Trotskyist, I still get a vicarious kick out of watching worldwide organisations knock seven shades out of each other, in vicious factional infighting over the correct application of a belief system largely incomprehensible to outsiders.

Recent events within the Anglican Communion have provided me with more fun than just about anything else since the bitter and protracted 1980s split in the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, globally the largest far left grouping of the period. And yes, I was a member.

While the parallels are not exact, both episodes have seen the US sections take the lead, with sharp divisions emerging between traditionalist and revisionist tendencies. In the USec, we saw the Barnesite faction take over the leadership of the US Socialist Workers’ Party and kick out anyone remotely critical of the Cuban Communist Party or ‘proletarianisation of the cadre’; in the Anglican instance, the hardliners have broken away to form the Anglican Church of North America, with the ordination of homosexuals the issue at stake.

ACNA has taken a page from the classic Trotskyist playbook, effectively proclaiming itself what is known in the jargon as an external faction. It is set to seek recognition from Canterbury as the ‘39th Province’ of the Anglican Communion, in the full knowledge that the request will be turned down.

That hasn’t stopped it looking for alliances with other traditions. Significantly, guests at ACNA’s founding convention included His Beatitude Jonah, the Archbishop of Washington, Metropolitan of All America and Canada. In other words, ACNA is seeking eucharistic fellowship with Orthodox believers, which rather undermines protestations of insincerity when invoking the 39th province gambit.

The next trick is to carry the fight into the other sections, of course. The Barnesites developed the Pathfinder Tendency of co-thinkers to push their politics elsewhere within the FI. In the Anglican context, the job will be done by an outfit known as the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans. The prospect is for years of paralysis and sterility while the two sides slug it out.

As I am firmly of the mind that voluntary organisations in civil society should be free to make their own rules, I am not taking sides in the scrap. Perhaps the only arena in which socialists should resolutely uphold free market fundamentalism is religion. There are thousands of denominations to choose from; let gay Christians and Christians who believe homosexuality to be sinful adhere to churches which teach in line with their prejudices. That is a necessary concomitant of religious freedom.

But there is one specific point worth making here. As far as I am aware, control of Anglican doctrine theoretically rests with government of the United Kingdom. True, this provision is more or less a dead letter, and has not been invoked since parliament rejected a new prayer book in 1928.

Yet legally speaking, the decision on the acceptability of lesbian and gay bishops should go to a vote of MPs, including non-Anglican Christians, atheists and Muslims. That is clearly inappropriate, given the religious composition of modern Britain, and underlines the need for disestablishment.

Many thoughtful Anglicans would agree with this proposition. Separation of church and state remains a basic democratic demand, and need not be detrimental to religious groups, as the US experience shows. This is one case in which the left should seek the privatisation of what has been a nationalised industry for far too long.

TO DESCRIBE someone as an ‘Islamophobe’ is effectively to brand them an ugly and virulent racist, which is no small accusation for one leftist to throw at another. Yet that sort of thing seems par for the course on the major British far left blogs.

Lenin’s Tomb, for example, has no problem in carrying an article under the title ‘Tatchell and pink-veiled Islamophobia’, just in case anyone was unaware that the leading green left activist is a bit of a Nancy Boy on the quiet.

Now Socialist Unity has taken up the theme, with a guest post by one Barry Kade, which we must presume to be a pseudonym. His contribution, ‘The intersections between homophobia and Islamophobia’, is pegged on the recent smears against Tatchell by a number of academics, who have accused him of ‘gay imperialism’. The mind boggles.

I could make any number of tasteless jokes at this point, but will restrict myself to the observation that Tatchell’s detractors are probably not insinuating that he has fused the state and finance capital to facilitate the export of surplus cottaging venues. Go back and read some Lenin, guys.

But I should ‘fess up at this point that I am biased on this one. Several previous entries on Dave’s Part have made it on to the Islamophobia Watch website, the proprietors of which I would both describe as friends. Not surprisingly, I take exception to the designation.

The neologism is ugly, for a start. Used as a suffix, ‘-phobia’ implies anxiety characterised by extreme or irrational fear of something commonplace. Well, I live in a Muslim-dominated area of the capital, and can guarantee everyone concerned that I experience no trepidation whatsoever prior to stepping outside my front door each morning.

A libertarian brand of leftism leaves me with no problem with people following whatever religious observances they wish, dressing anyhow they damn well like, and speaking any language they decide to speak.

As an analytical proposition, there is no difference to me between a middle-age Muslim woman in a burqa and some dumb teenage stoner chick with multiple tattoos and piercings and an exceedingly stupid haircut. Neither outfit comes recommended for a sophisticated soiree at a suburban golf club, but it’s not my look out, either way.

Leave me alone to drink until my liver packs up, sleep with whom I choose, listen to blues and jazz and follow a cranky health food diet, and don’t tell me what books I can and cannot read. And I’ll cut you the same kind of slack. Deal? Deal.

And where we have common political cause, let us work together. Anti-Muslim racism – and ‘Islamophobia’ must mean that, if it means anything at all – is a distinctive brand of the more general phenomenon, which the left should oppose precisely for that reason.

New Labour and the Tories pander to it, in a typically British understated kind of way, as and when it suits their electoral purposes; the British National Party mobilise their steadily-growing electoral constituency around it.

Every socialist can and must do everything they can to counter such vile prejudice, at every level from arguments with workmates to the physical defence of threatened communities. But that does not mean the rest of our political agenda is therefore negotiable.

To his credit, Kade stresses the need to challenge homophobia in the Muslim working class. That is an important improvement on the famous ‘shibboleth’ argument first advanced by Lindsey German, a leading figure in the Socialist Workers Party, a few years back.

It clearly is not the case that if there is a choice between defending gay rights and scoring a few council seats on the back of endorsement from the local mosque, the savvy thing to do is to backpedal on gay rights.

Where Kade is too soft is in his implied insistence that nothing must be allowed to intrude on Muslim sensitivities. Thus he fulminates against few unfunny cartoons in little-read Danish satirical publications, because they supposedly degrade and denigrate religion.

Leftists – especially leftists contesting elections - would be crazy to degrade or denigrate religion gratuitously, of course. It is not exactly the fast track to winning friends and influencing people.

But we do in principle uphold the right to denigrate religion, even for overtly reactionary purposes, just as we uphold the right of the religious to denigrate non-believers.

Maybe it is because I look just like a commie that at bottom I do believe that Baptist preachin’ southern funky school teachers should be able to picket gay funerals, and that al Ghurabaa should be allowed to brandish placards with the demand to ‘butcher those who mock Islam’.

It’s called freedom of speech. Thoughtful progressive Muslims would not for one moment sacrifice it to build an alliance with the secular left. Why should they make it a condition for an alliance with us?

LADY GAGA is going to Hell, according to a fringe Christian denomination in the US. OK, I admit I haven’t listened to very much of the woman’s music, or any music at all recorded much after 1983, come to that. But it’s only rock ‘n’ roll, as the saying goes. Surely she can’t be that bad?

Oh yes she can, argues Topeka-based Westboro Baptist Church, which has revealed that it will picket the singer’s gig in St Louis on Thursday this week. The press release is a minor classic:

“Art” and “fashion” are the euphemisms, the guise under which proud whore Lady Gaga teaches rebellion against God (incidentally, her claim to the title of “Lady” is sound only if she tacks on “of the night,” thereby alluding to another euphemism for what she is). As much as she’d like to pretend otherwise, there’s nothing new or different about this particular hussy’s pretentious prancing. Does the simple slut truly think that she can change God’s standards by seducing a generation of rebels into joining her in fist-raised, stiffnecked, hard-hearted rebellion against Him? Get real!

Now, I am the last bloke who would willingly answer questions on Lady G’s religious philosophy as a specialist topic on Mastermind. Even so, I suspect it is a safe guess that she harbours few insurrectionary ambitions against divinity, and is simply out to secure a few chart hits, get laid more frequently, and procure loads of drugs.

What of the Rev Fred Waldron Phelps and his flock? Well, this lot have certainly have got form. Westboro Baptist is infamous for hold demos outside the funerals of victims of anti-gay hate crime and those who died from AIDS, with placards bearing the charming slogan ‘God hates fags’.

As a sideline, Westboro Baptist also organised similar protests at the burials of the repatriated remains of US military personnel killed in Iraq. This time the placards read: ‘Thank God for dead soldiers’. Even for the country that gave the world the first amendment, that was a bit much. In 2006, Dubya signed the Respect for America’s Fallen Heroes Act into law, outlawing any repeat performance.

Meanwhile, back in Britain, Islamist sect Islam4UK is seeking permission to stage a protest march in Wooton Bassett, the small town near Swindon through which regularly sees processions of hearses bearing the coffins of servicemen and women who lost their lives in Afghanistan. Rev Phelps and Islam4UK leader Anjem Choudary patently want to thank the same God for the same dead soldiers.

It is of course true that if a contingent of white-haired elderly Quaker ladies in Wiltshire wanted to march to highlight the death toll in Afghanistan, they would simply be patronised as wooly-minded pacifists, and allowed to get on with it.

But context is everything, and this move is an obvious provocation from what is effectively a front organisation for banned Islamist faction Al Muhajiroun, who are manifestly not peaceniks of any description.

It has been suggested that the announcement is simply a stunt on the part of the publicity-savvy Mr Choudary, and I very much hope that is the case. If it goes ahead, it will inevitably generate a huge counter-mobilisation likely to boost the fortunes of the fascist British National Party ahead of an impending general election. Choudary either does not care about this, or positively relishes the prospect.

All of this leaves the principled humanist secular left with a huge headache. After all, if we do not uphold the elementary argument for freedom of speech, who will? So here we are, forced to extend our efforts in support of a manifestation of execrable religious bigotry. It is an obvious sucker punch, and we can even see it coming, but we have no alternative but to walk straight into it.

Maybe God would consider taking Phelps and Choudary as a trade-off for Lady Gaga? I ask you to remember this suggestion in your prayers.

UPDATE: This post has earned me my first appearance on ConservativeHome's 'Left Watch' red baiting website. Under a Tory government, it seems, the right to demonstrate would be restricted to protests of which the Conservatives approve.

I think that the proprietors have scored an own goal, as a number of rightwing civil libertarians are agreeing with my stance. Please wade in on my behalf here.

THERE’S an old joke about the Pope’s attitude to contraception, attributed variously to Irish comedian Dave Allen or the Italian-American community at large. The punchline runs: ‘If he doesn’t play the game, he shouldn’t try to make the rules.’

I am inescapably reminded of the quip after reading about the intervention of the world’s most prominent former Hitler Youth into current UK debates about equality.

Benedict XVI believes that British legislation runs contrary to natural law, placing ‘limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs’. This is widely taken as a reference to the ban on adoption agencies, including Catholic adoption agencies, discriminating against gay adoptive parents.

It may also be a sideswipe the current equality bill, which narrows the existing exemptions enjoyed by religious groups, permitting them to insist that employees abide by their doctrines.

Well, New Labour in office has been adamant about its wish for ‘dialogue’ with ‘faith communities’, so it can hardly feign surprise when a religion with over 4m adherents takes it up on the idea.

It’s worth noting here that well into the 1970s, many inner city Catholic priests in England wielded a de facto block vote, and this remains the case today in parts of Scotland. The faithful have traditionally been advised to ‘vote Labour with no illusions’, to borrow a catchphrase.

Benedict XVI’s appeal to Lex Naturalis instantly makes me uneasy. It’s an elastic concept that indisputably forms part of the western liberal tradition, but does have a certain protean quality.

Catholicism endows the term with a very specific Thomist understanding. As I understand it, natural law is the philosophical basis of the Romanist job lot rejection of rubber johnnies, birth control pills, inappropriate self-stimulation of one’s pudenda and homosexuality.

Conception is the natural end of sex, and therefore procreation must be open to the possibility, even if that means large numbers of Africans coming down with HIV.

What of the issues at hand? I’ve heard it said that Catholic adoption agencies do good work, frequently finding homes for severely handicapped kids that are the hardest to place. Religious believers are seemingly more motivated to take on this difficult task, and the rest of us should be thankful for that.

But why have specifically Catholic adoption agencies in the first place? Aren’t they a throwback to the days when knocked-up Catholic schoolgirls needed somewhere to dump the unfortunate sprog before getting carted off to the nearest Magdalene Laundry?

Given the change in social mores, adoption nowadays is more properly the job of local government. The interests of the children involved are the only real priority, and to deny them loving care on the grounds of an adopter’s sexuality is not the best way to advance them. Catholicism needs either to get with the programme. If it feels it cannot do so, it should butt out of the field.

But on the matter of employment, the Pope has a rather stronger case, albeit on strictly secular grounds. It is not the province of government to rule on whom any voluntary association may or may not accept into membership or put on its payroll. For the sake of a healthy relationship between state and civil society, this point really has to prevail.

Perhaps the first significant erosion of this principle came with the Tory anti-union laws of the 1980s, which withdrew from trade unions the ability to exclude strike-breakers, and forced them to accept applications from active fascists.

We will see if the rightwing commentators who will no doubt speak up in favour of Benedict XVI in the days ahead possess sufficient logical consistency to accept this elementary point.

And writing as a leftwing commentator, yes, precisely the same consideration applies to the nonsensical decision that the British National Party should be forced to accept black members. Isn’t hating black people the very point of being in the BNP?

If the same yardstick was applied universally, Hizb ut Tahrir would be debarred from turning down evangelical Christians, for instance. I’m looking forward to the test case already.

Common sense alone dictates that the League Against Cruel Sports has no duty to be an equal opportunities employer in respect of illegal cock fighting aficionados. If you apply to be a Conservative parliamentary candidate and then inform the selection meeting that you are an anarcho-syndicalist, you do not have grounds subsequently to bring a discrimination case.

Peter Tatchell – a man with whom I usually agree on much – has been widely quoted taking the Pope to task on this one. But my guess is that he wouldn’t hire an overt homophobe for an admin job at OutRage!

By the same token, if you want to work for the Catholic Church, your potential bosses might reasonably expect you to uphold the teachings of Catholicism. If you are gay, it will presumably not have escaped your notice that the Vatican has a longstanding downer on hot man-on-man legover action.

And why would a self-respecting gay man or woman want to be a member of an organisation that teaches them that same-sex personal relationships are sinful, anyway? There are plenty of wussy denominations that take a more inclusive line, not least the Church of England.

A substantial wing of the CoE even lays theological claim to a brand of camper than a row of tents Catholicity, and will happily do you all the smells and bells you can handle. What’s not to like?

ANY RELIGIOUS tradition sufficiently Froot Loop to ordain Sinead O’Connor as a Bishop just has to be a couple of beads short of a full rosary. Nothing compares 2 that, you could say.

Nevertheless, I have to admit that the former Trotskyist in me retains a certain voyeuristic fascination for what is known as Traditionalist Catholicism. When it comes to sterile factionalist denunciation of mainstream sell-out merchants in the name of orthodoxy, these guys make the far left look like amateurs.

Even the designations they use for two-bob mini-organisations are heavily redolent of the grandiose monikers adopted by the more embarrassing microsect claimants to the heritage of Lev Davidovich Brontstein.

Calling yourself the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter, the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest or the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer surely evinces a mentality not too far removed from the chutzpah needed to set up shop as the Liaison Committee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist International or the International Trotskyist Committee for the Political Regeneration of the Fourth International.

Then there are the deviations. Where we compare and contrast Shactmanism, Pabloism and the International Committee tradition, Traditionalist Catholics get to denounce each other as sedevacantists or conclavists. Splitters!

The clincher is the irresistible appeal both doctrines hold for crap thesps. We’ve got Vanessa Redgrave, they’ve got Mel Gibson. And I am well aware that Gibson does far better box office these days.

So much for the preamble. From my Hong Kong redoubt, I have been reading the Daily Telegraph website, which details the case of Bishop Richard Williamson, who is to stand trial in Germany in April on charges of Holocaust denial:

The notorious English bishop also allegedly told colleagues from his ultraconservative brotherhood that "a completely new world order" had been built on the "fact" that Jews were systematically gassed in concentration camps such as Auschwitz, Treblinka and Sobibor.

In a separate email, he is said to have written that "1.3 million deported people" were not gassed in the Treblinka, Majdanek, Belzec and Sobibor concentration camps as historians claim, but were rather transported to the Soviet Union.

Googling up the guy’s history, I notice that he was excommunicated from Rome in 1988 for a technical breach of the rules, rather than any ideological disagreement. A bit like the kids that have just been flung out of the SWP for aligning themselves with John Rees, I guess.

But here’s the good bit. In January last year, the excommunication was rescinded. And on the very day Williamson was effectively readmitted, he gave a Holocaust denial interview to Swedish telly. Hence the impending court case.

Earlier this week, I defended Benedict XVI’s appeal for the Catholicism to be exempted from employment legislation granting equal rights to homosexuals. I was delighted to win bouquets from bloggers as diverse as Fr Tim Finigan, parish priest of Our Lady of the Rosary, Blackfen, to Irish ex-SWPer Splintered Sunrise.

I would not resile from that earlier post; ultimately, the Catholic church alone should be the arbiter of whom it decides to put on its payroll or admit into membership. But it's a year since Williamson's comments, which have not been denied, and I am unaware that he faces any disciplinary procedure.

So just how is it that homosexuality is a barrier to the priesthood, and Holocaust denial seemingly is not? Or am I missing something? Oh, and what does Bishop O'Connor have to say on this one?