Robin Herne, who runs the religious studies and ethics degree at the University of Suffolk at West Suffolk College, solves your dilemmas

Dear Robin,

We recently visited one of my husband's cousins who is a devout Muslim (my husband was raised Muslim but lost all interest before we met). Our son wanted to watch Doctor Who, his favourite show. The cousin turned the TV off because one of the characters – the new companion – is homosexual. There wasn't an argument, but it did get awkward. We assured our son that he could watch on catch-up back at home. The cousin genuinely seemed to think that seeing a gay character on TV would somehow corrupt our son. Why on earth do people still think like that?

Marla

Dear Marla,

How strange! The new companion, Bill, is indeed portrayed as a lesbian, though in a rather understated way. If your in-law is imagining that the programme is now featuring torrid scenes, perhaps he just needs reassuring that it is still tame enough for a young audience.

Your son may have the occasional nightmare about Daleks or Zygons, but nothing likely to make a stronger psychological impression than that. There are an assortment of passages in the Quran and the Hadiths explicitly condemning homosexuality (chiefly between men, very little is said about lesbianism). Islam is not the only religion to take a condemnatory stance towards same-sex relationships, though as with any religion, individual levels of conviction differ from one person to the next. Some Muslims are ardently opposed to anything that might be deemed as presenting gay people in a normalised manner (which the Doctor Who series certainly does), whilst others are really not bothered one way or another. Plus there are plenty enough people who are both Muslim and LGBT.

This situation seems to highlight a couple of issues – at one level there is your in-law's spiritual disapproval of LGBT people which, in a mostly free country, they are allowed to do. Trying to convince him to think otherwise might be taken as an attempt to undermine or challenge his faith, which is unlikely to go down well. The fact that your husband has already fallen away from his family faith might be a contentious enough issue in itself without further provocation. You sound fairly liberal, but you may just have to accept as a nuclear family that some of your relatives think as they do and nothing much that you can say will change that.

Explain this to your son, so he understands why he wasn't allowed to see his TV show, but also put your own alternate reasoning to him. I don't know how old your child is, but hopefully he is of an age to reach his own conclusions.

Another issue is the notion that seeing a gay character on TV (let alone a person in real life) might somehow make a youngster grow up gay, or in some other way become the kind of person that his family would disapprove of. Whilst some adults go through periods of sexual experimentation, there is no evidence to suggest that watching a positive representation of an LBGT person on TV can in anyway alter a person's sexual orientation one way or another. Though possibly it might influence a person's social or political views, maybe leading them to a more tolerant or sympathetic stance.

It may be that the cousin thinks the boy is too young to think about some issues – a lot of people have the notion that childhood innocence means remaining in blissful ignorance of some sections of the human population. The children I know seem to spend more time speculating who would win in a fight between a Dalek and a Cyberman than they ever do in paying attention to the private lives of the adults around them. Children are much less bothered by things than adults tend to think they will be.

In a world where a government can set about carting men off to interrogation camps to torture, brutalise, and kill them for the simple act of fancying other men, then I am all in favour of anything that promotes tolerance and humane acceptance.

Aside from Angela Merkel, no other world leader appears to have even attempted to stand up on behalf of these men being persecuted in Chechnya. It echoes the grotesque events of the 1930s, where the violent abuse and eventual organised slaughter of unpopular groups went unchallenged. If, as I rather suspect, most governments of the world could care less about the deaths of a few gays, they might want to reflect that those who get a taste for blood are rarely satisfied with a small number of victims. A recent news story suggests that families are being invited to murder their own gay relatives, without any legal consequence. This is where it starts, not where it ends.

Chechnya is an extreme case, but not an isolated one. Russia has a terrible record for violence towards sexual minorities, and even in the supposedly liberal west most countries have vocal and influential pressure groups that want to criminalise LGBT people once again, if not impose ineffectual and unethical medical treatment, or take far grimmer steps. Extremism is not confined to Islamic State hurling people off roofs – and it is most certainly not confined to Islam either.

Since its revival in 2005 Doctor Who has made concerted efforts to give positive representations of LGBT people, strong female characters, ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, and other often side-lined groups of people. If you are happy for your son to watch then, alongside allaying any fears about aliens hiding behind the sofa, you could take a lead from the series to discuss how he sees other people, how he treats kids at school, neighbours etc. To quote from the Time Lord himself, 'Human progress isn't measured by industry. It's measured by the value you place on a life.... That's what defines an age, that's… what defines a species.'

There is no shortage of preachers, politicians, and pundits who are convinced that some lives don't matter, are worthless, should even be snuffed out – for any number of spurious reasons, of which sexuality is but one.

Whatever your son thinks of the new character Bill, if he takes to heart the Doctor's passionate advocacy of the fundamental value of all human life regardless of class, race, religion, or any other divisions we dream up, then he will grow up to be a good adult.

Do you have a dilemma you would like Robin to solve in his inimitable way? Email robin.herne@wsc.ac.uk or write to him c/o Portman House, 120 Princes St, Ipswich IP1 1RS