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…
I see I’ve scared the bejaysus out of the usual commentators.
Oopsie.
Left by Reed on January 25th, 2007
I do like sectarianism. As Alan Bennett pointed out, the C of E don’t care what you believe, all that matters is that you can organise a tight jumble sale.
You are of course bang on the money, Reed. And the observation that the Roman relationship to motherhood is like Manchausen’s by proxy resonates like a tolling bell.
The problem is that so many religious groups take observations and turn them either into curses or prescriptions.
Yes. It is observable that children do best when raised by two stable loving adults. But the fact that children do best when raised by a pair of loving parents does not mean that the next best is a pair of abusive and disfunctional adults.
Of course, if your society does not countentance stable relationships between adults of the same sex, then the only template will be heterosexual marriage. To test same-sex couple adoption in these terms, you have to try it out.
But the fact remains, what the Church takes as a prescription is merely an observation. As another example, the “curse” that the sins of the fathers are visited on the children even unto the 5th generation. How could a kind and loving God make such a curse on the liddle innocents? Well, the kind and loving God did not make such a curse. It’s an observation. Look around you and you see dysfunctionalism is learned at the mother’s knee. If your mother’s knee is there to learn it at, of course.
Good rant, Reed. It’s seet me up for the day.
Aphra.
Left by Aphra Behn on January 26th, 2007
*another lapsed catholic nods along to the rant*
I lapsed before I was really aware there was any such thing as homosexuality - it was some of the many other hypocritical aspects and the telling small children that they were inherently wicked that caused the scales to fall from my eyes. Had it not, I’d be storming out of the church shouting now.
The govt response is irritating me too. St Tone (flirting with converting since 1998) is equivocating, and has asked Ruth Kelly to find a compromise. Ruth Kelly. Opus Dei-affiliated Ruth Kelly? Shurely shome mishtake?
Why do we *need* a compromise? If they are allowed to ignore laws on the grounds of what their imaginary friend tells them, can I go to my nearest catholic church, steal stuff and use as my defence that *my* imaginary friend tells me I have to steal things from catholics?
Left by Kelli on January 26th, 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6293875.stm
Just in case you missed the CofE in all this. I find this statement particularly strange:
“The rights of conscience cannot be made subject to legislation, however well meaning.”
My religion tells me I must burn christians - it is a matter of conscience for me, but the law of the land says I’m not allowed to. I can ignore that law though right? Because “The rights of conscience cannot be made subject to legislation, however well meaning.”
Bleurgh.
Left by Kelli on January 26th, 2007
>> “The rights of conscience cannot be made subject to legislation, however well meaning.”
On t’other hand, glorifying terrorism is a crime.
I didn’t know you’d been raised a left-footer, Kelli.
Oh, and the C0fE, having finally decided they have an opinion on this one, have the wrong one.
B
Left by Aphra Behn on January 26th, 2007
To hell with them all………..I wonder where their “rights of conscience…….” dictum was when they covered up all the pedophilia among priests! My blood is boiling……Dee
Left by Dee on January 26th, 2007
You didn’t scare me away, Reed. I’ve just had my head up my bum for a few days, recovering from the redraft.
I’m an old left-footer too (how I love to slip that expression into conversation) and I’m not even exactly lapsed. I do intend to go to mass on a Sunday only it can be very exhausting with a small frenzied lemming in tow who is hellbent on crawling through the pews and flinging himself at the priest. So most weeks I cop out.
But I cannot stand this kind of prejudiced hypocritical bollocks. It makes me so angry. It is not just the Catholic Church’s nonsensical, two-faced rubbish but the attitude of any heterosexual person who presumes to tell a gay person what they can and can’t do, what their rights are and how they should live their lives. What makes the heterosexual person superior? Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
And, if we did an honest headcount, how many priests would be gay? None of them, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Conner? Oh, OK.
Left by Helen on January 27th, 2007
Well, if the Catholic church is following the same line of thinking as the Anglican one, there’s this splendid bit of sophism they use to get out of seeming to be unreasonable about the issue of sexuality which goes: it’s not a sin to be gay, it’s merely a sin to act on those, um, urges. Which _of course_ isn’t a problem for a celebate preisthood.
I have to say I could see why the government
was going carefully over this - I felt it was a bit harsh for certain comentators (not you, Reed) to suggest that there wasn’t a debate to be had.
It’s nothing to do with my own views on the subject, which are entirely supportive of the idea of gay couples adopting, by the way.
Anyway, the debate I was thinking of was over the issue of what you do if two conflicting groups both want their rights protected - particularly when one of them is a religious group and the other one isn’t. This is an issue which I can only see getting more urgent, but unfortunately after turning a few ideas around for a while, I realised I’m not interested enough in protecting the rights of any religious group to be able to think of any good arguments in favour.
But I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the government is dithering because it can forsee a time when there’s going to be an almighty dust up over religion versus the state beyond the workplace spats occurring now over the wearing of various all enveloping veils, and in typical fashion is wondering if there is possibly a way to make everyone happy.
Course that does mean it gives more weight than is strictly necessary to the actual pants arguments used by the Catholic church, but there you go.
Left by Sol on January 29th, 2007
The thing that bothers me most about the Catholic stance on this, is not that they have particular beliefs (though I do find those beliefs silly and offensive), nor that therefore they have an issue of conscience versus the law on their hands as a result. It’s the incomprehensible hypocrisy of their stance, or to be more precise, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor’s stance on the issue. And that not many commentators seemed to have spotted it at the time of writing the above post.
The whole conscience versus law thing is a minefield. It is obviously a noble thing to follow your conscience and resist the law in, say, Nazi Germany. It is an ignoble thing to follow your conscience and deny the law in toady’s Britain, when your conscience urges you to discriminate against gay people. Neither law nor conscience is an infallible absolute guide. What, then, can we rely on?
At which point in the discussion I not infrequently start weeping into my gin.
Left by Reed on January 29th, 2007
Wonderful rant, Reed. Cogent, well-put. Convincing. Of course, you didn’t have to convince me, I agree with you completely.
Over here in the “grand ol’ USofA” we are struggling with the concept of legislating morality. When does “Life” begin, at conception? Abortion is murder, they scream. Civilization as we know it will fall if homosexual couples are allowed to marry. Gaaaaa! For lack of a better world.
Left by healingmagichands on January 30th, 2007
I am becoming fed up with having other people’s imaginary friends forced down my throat! Either Church and State are separate or they are one. But which church? Christian; Catholic, Protestant or Evangelical, Islam; Shi’ite, Sunni or Sufi, The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster or the church of Wicca.
It is interesting how the Evangelicals in the USA are starting to look more and more like the Catholics.
Me? I will continue to pour a libation to Gaia each solstice and equinox. Not so She will remember me, but so that I shall remember Her. For without Her, we are as dust upon her skin.
Left by Archie on January 31st, 2007
Hey, don’t lump the Flying Spaghetti Monster in with those false gods!
Reed, this decision to “do comment” is already bearing gnarled, juicy, deformed, bitter fruit. Craig Brown once said of Chris Morris that everyone was left “spattered with his cold rage” - as if that was a bad thing. More please.
Left by Ed on February 5th, 2007