Christian pastors in Singapore are showing that they are not going to allow an anti-gay law to be repealed without a fight.

Pastor Yang Tuck Yoong of Cornerstone Community Church told Straits Times that church leaders have met several times over the last month to discuss a collective response to the court case currently challenging Singapore’s Section 377A, the colonial era law that criminalizes gay sex.

‘The pastors came to an unanimous decision: we will get our church members involved in the debate in a civil way, to say that we don’t want Section 377A repealed,’ said Yang.

Yang added that if the gay community had not pushed for a repeal of the law, ‘we would not come out into the public square. You touch a law that affects us, we have the right to speak up.’

Yang wrote a belligerent blogpost calling for the church to ‘get herself into battle footing, and be battle-ready’ against the LGBT community, but has since edited it to remove those references. Yang told Straits Times that he edited the post so as not to ‘inflame this issue any further’.

Yang’s church is part of LoveSingapore, group of churches representing 40,000 Christians, whom Yang said will be mobilized against the repeal of Section 377A.

The group includes the church of Pastor Lawrence Khong, who warned former prime minister Goh Chok Tong of the ‘looming threat’ of the repeal of the law when Goh visited his ‘megachurch’.

Inclusive Christian priest Rev Miak Siew responded to Khong saying his concept of the ‘traditional family’ was not biblical.

Singapore’s LGBT rights activists refused to be called into the ‘battle’.

‘We are not issuing any statement as we should respect the sanctity of the judiciary and not pressure it, or prejudice the case,’ Pink Dot organizer Paerin Choa said to Straits Times.

The debate has got so much publicity that yesterday the Attorney-General’s Chambers issued a statement warning both sides that if the vocal debate continued there was ‘a real risk of prejudice’ to current court cases.