Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. People in every time in recorded history have felt that a previous time was really all sunshine and rainbows. Usually, they hearken back to their childhood because that was a time when they were protected from the realities and hardships of life, a time when they were kept in ignorance of the adult world. Unfortunately, what they are nostalgic for is not a previous era, but their own ignorance and innocence. That is both impractical and foolish, for it is a necessary part of growing up to recognise that there is injustice and pain in the world, that there has always been injustice and pain, and that some of it is outwith our control, but not outwith our compassion or our attempts to minimise it where we can.
If pressed, most people don't really want to go back to a time where women and poor men were denied a vote, or where millions of people were forcibly removed from their lands to be enslaved by others, or where the world was ravaged by pointless wars. Or where the sort of labour saving devices we have today are unheard of. Where there were no laws against dumping dangerous chemicals at sea, or where big cities were choked with smog every winter. Where children died from preventable diseases and cancer was a death sentence. What they want is simply the ignorance back, where they were unaware of the deaths, the suffering and the disease. Those people are like children, howling for the shiny pretty moon and refusing to believe it's just a lump of rock 384,400 km away.
Further, for the last two thousand years, various Bible believers have held that the end times were nigh. In the 1st century right through to the 21st century, some of them have been so certain that the world is about to end, or that Jesus is about to return, that they have given up good jobs, spent their savings, failed to ensure a financially comfortable future - even taken their own lives. But the only thing they have all had in common as well as this delusion, is that they have all been wrong.
Whether these are the 'end times' or not, every person is responsible for their own behaviour and for ensuring that their children, their families and wider society have a good future. So they should take care of the world, not pollute it. They should love people for who and what they are, and teach their children to do the same. They should make no adverse judgements based on race, colour, gender or sexuality. They should judge people only on what they do, not what they are, and they should recognise that consenting adults can choose to do whatever they want with other consenting adults. They should reach out to those in need and help them, and the same to those who are in pain. They should work towards leaving the world a better place after they've gone, not rely on some cosmic Mr Fix-It to clean up their mess and the damage they've done to others by their intolerance and limited thinking.
Mr Packer is no different from many others in this respect, scared of the adult world, scared of people who are different from him, scared of a world where there is no cosmic Mr Fix-It. Instead of learning to overcome his fear, he's trying to push that fear onto his followers, to keep them safe from that scary adult world where we are all solely responsible for the good and the evil that we do. The more he surrounds himself with people who think like he does, the more he will feel comforted in his childish little world.
Instead of leading his flock towards an understanding that gay people are born that way, he wants to shut his people away from reason, from science, from biology and from tolerance. He wants to return to his childhood where he didn't need to know about adults and sexuality, and he wants his followers to go there too. It's a losing battle, though I'm sure he'll continue to fight it long after the battle is lost. He and his ilk, those who preach intolerance and hatred in the words of a supposedly loving god, will become more and more marginalised as our understanding of the causes of sexuality increases.
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