Where Everybody's Crazy

"I take a moral stance; you are an intolerant bigot; he is being prosecuted under section 5 of the Public Order Act."

This story confuses me. There's obviously something more to it than meets the eye, and I don't know what - on further digging I find that despite the UCCF saying:

We would not dream of telling a Muslim group or a political society how to elect their leaders or who could or could not become a member

it's only one of the two Christian groups on campus that was affected, and one other Christian group and other religious groups - indeed, the Islamic group, who will presumably have had the same religious objections - have complied with the new regulations. So it's not as simple as that. Something else is going on. Is it actually direct persecution? Or is it just another example of a UCCF group manufacturing themselves a persecution by being unnecessarily arsey? I honestly don't have enough information.

But it got me thinking - is it possible to take a moral stance without being an intolerant bigot? Iqbal Sacranie got a severe Tatchelling recently, and a visit from the police, for expressing an Muslim view on homosexuality. I'm not interested in the whole "we're becoming a police state, freedom of speech, moo moo moo" thing; the fact is that we are in a postmodern society, something for which I am usually very grateful, and this means that the right to be whoever you want to be without someone judging you on it is non-negotiable.

Instead, I'm more interested in looking at if there are ways to make moral and ethical pronouncements (whether a third party considers them justified or not) in a postmodern society. Can there be a postmodern ethics? Maybe there simply can't, and that's the end of the story. Maybe you just have to be an intolerant bigot if think there's a moral code that others should live by. But are there ways of communicating and "recommending" ethics that don't end with people shooting the messenger not the message? I don't know.

Man, heavy blogging today.

Update: I have in my hand "Postmodern Ethics"; so presumably, it is possible.