Let me see if I have got this correct. The Equality Act, due to come into effect pretty shortly, outlaws the denying of goods and services to a person because of their sexual orientation. Adoption agencies, therefore, may not automatically deny a gay couple the chance to adopt based soley on the fact that they are, in fact, gay. So, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, has written a letter to the government declaring that should the Equality Act fire up unopposed, Catholic adoption agencies will have to shut up shop. You can read the full text of the letter here.
Read it? Yes? Oh, but it gives me far too many things to scream about. I have spent all afternoon mentally reviewing the troops and carefully adding, say, sarcasm, to the weapons pile, eyeing it, taking it off again and laying it down next to swearing, sighing, chucking it back on again. I have certainly carefully removed foul-mouthed personal abuse from the pile several times but it does keep recrudescing [Oh, hey, don't look at me. I'm trying to keep you out of trouble - Ed]. So. Let’s get this exploration of the acme of hypocrisy over and done with, it’s giving me heart-burn already.
- The worthy archbishop begins: ‘The Catholic Church utterly condemns all forms of unjust discrimination, violence, harassment or abuse directed against people who are homosexual. Indeed the Church teaches that they must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity.’ Yes, well. Note careful use of the word ‘unjust’, which neatly leaves a loophole in which one can be just as discriminatory as one likes as long as one can argue that it’s ‘just’. (Also, note use of word ‘accepted’. I don’t know that many gay couples who want to be ‘accepted’ any more than they want to be ‘tolerated’. I think they’d all rather be so far within the continuum of normalcy that the whole issue of having to to be ‘accepted’ does not arise. How would you, oh straight married readers of mine, feel if some nice vicar or other told you he ‘accepted’ you and your relationship? Well, quite).
- Despite the Church teaching that homosexuals ‘must’ be ‘accepted’, he then points out that it also teaches that homosexuals are not adoptive parent material. Basically, acceptance of a homosexual most certainly does not include acceptance of his or her being a parent, a role that is not only accepted in but expected of, if not outrageously forced upon, straight women, no matter how young or unfit or unwilling to bear a child, in a kind of Munchausen’s-by-Proxy of reproductivity, by yet other Catholic teachings. Which makes NO SENSE.
- Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor then goes on to point out that: ‘We place significant emphasis on marriage, as it is from the personal union of a man and a woman that new life is born and it is within the loving context of such a relationship that a child can be welcomed and nurtured. Marital love involves an essential complementarity of male and female.’ Oh. These kiddies that need new homes, they were not welcomed and nurtured within the loving context of a personal union of a man and a woman at all. Yet, nevertheless, this ‘personal union’ is the Cardinal’s prerequisite for a loving relationship. This sorry, messy, biological, instinct-driven, ungoverned, thoughtless, even violent and cruel, personal union, is somehow a better foundation for a loving relationship than the fact that two people, in a minority, in the face of discrimination, bullying, a whole media-fed nation of mindless jeering stereotypes and ugly expectations of misery and disaster, have nevertheless found in each other the love and strength to make a family. I, oh, but… [Words have failed her. She is currently biting her nails and muttering 'argh argh argh'].
- Moving swiftly on [Chance would be a fine thing], the Cardinal announces that it would be ‘unjust discrimination against Catholics for the government to insist that if they wish to continue to work with local authorities, Catholic adoption agencies must act against the teaching of the Church and their own consciences by being obliged in law to provide such a service.’ Yes indeedy, unjust discrimination. I did say the distinction would be important. You see, it is perfectly just for a Catholic adoption agency worker, funded, no less, by the bloody government, to refuse to consider a gay couple as potential parents, but it is unjust for said government to ask them to spend our taxes in a manner consistent with the laws of the land. I am running out of fingernails here.
- And for the full what-the-bloody-buggering-fuck moment, apparantly, ‘Homosexual couples are referred to other agencies where their adoption application may be considered. This “sign-posting” responsibility is taken very seriously by all Catholic adoption agencies.’ Let me see if I, lapsed and atheistical as I am, can understand this. A Catholic agency will not let gay couples adopt their own batch of kids, but will tell them where they can go and find other kids to adopt. So, a Catholic, who deeply believes that homosexuals should not adopt, will nevertheless make a discrimination not only between who can and can’t parent, but between which kids they are and are not prepared to protect from the horrors of GayDad. And they take this sorting of the infant sheep from the goats very seriously.
- Finally, well, probably not finally, but really, the subject is beginning to make me boke, this Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, who is so anxious to protect his Catholic staff from having to face the repellant task of agreeing that a gay couple could actually be decent responsible parents, is the same man who ‘naively’ shuffled a child-abusing priest to a fresh parish a few years ago. (Because, allegedly, his Church taught him to, which is a whole ‘nother rant, but it unavoidably involves mentioning the current Pope’s track record and I just. Can’t. Do. That [Not without a great deal of beserker foaming and gnawing of shield rims, at any rate, and she never can remember what she did when the fit was on her]). A vicar of Christ, therefore, may be allowed any amount of contact with small vulnerable children, regardless of how inappropriate or horrible that contact, and the Church shall carefully pretend that there is no problem at all in this, but a couple who might show the child that homosexuality is not incompatible with having only the one head with no horns on it, may not have any contact with said child at all.
Gentle Readers, if I were not already a very lapsed Catholic indeed…
