|TOP|The leader of Scottish Catholics has delivered a strongly worded homily to a congregation of Catholic Peers and MPs in Westminster Wednesday in which he voiced his fierce opposition to the government’s sexual orientation regulations.

In his homily, Cardinal Keith O’Brien warned that the government’s proposed regulations designed to outlaw “sexual orientation discrimination” constitute a “threat to freedom of conscience” and “a threat to religious freedom”.

The Equality Act 2006, which means that the government can now prohibit discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation in the provision of goods and services, could come into effect by October this year.

It means thousands of bed and breakfast owners will no longer be able to refuse same-sex couples as guests while religious newspapers will not be able to decline advertising requests from homosexual organisations on grounds of conscience.

|QUOTE|The Catholic Bishops of Scotland responded earlier to a DTI consultation on the proposals which ended June 5th 2006, calling for the freedom of conscience to be respected.

"A fundamental principle that has to underpin any proposals for regulation is that the freedom of conscience of individuals must be respected. It is not licit to force an individual to act contrary to his moral belief,” said the Bishops in a statement.

“It is a well-established and reasonable moral position to regard homosexual acts and the promotion of the moral equivalence of heterosexual and homosexual relationships as wrong."

Cardinal O’Brien claimed yesterday that the regulations will "force people of faith to approve and cooperate with values that they can never in conscience accept.

“Faced with such threats, the Church must speak out not just for its own freedoms but the freedoms of all."

He also warned that the government will “overreach” the limits of its authority if it approves the proposals before he accused it of "trampling legitimate moral freedoms when it imposes values, which are without rational and sociological merit”.

Citing the example of St Thomas More, Cardinal O’Brien claimed that “the right to adhere to one’s beliefs is beyond the powers of earthly sovereigns and human governments."

He added that "democracy which separates itself from truth, taking the path of moral relativism, can soon become thinly veiled totalitarianism".