John Finnis has been accused of having “a long record of extremely discriminatory views”

A petition to remove an Oxford law professor from teaching has attracted 350 signatures in five days.

John Finnis, emeritus professor of law and legal philosophy, has been accused of having “a long record of extremely discriminatory views against many groups of disadvantaged people”, including gays.

Remarks highlighted by the petition’s authors include a comment from his Collected Essays in which he suggests that homosexual conduct is “never a valid, humanly acceptable choice” and is “destructive of human character and relationships” because “it treats human sexual capacities in a way which is deeply hostile to the self-understanding of those members who are willing to commit themselves to real marriage”.

This essay was published in 2011 but refers to arguments he made in an essay from