Cardinal Keith O'Brien. Photo credit: Catholic Chuch (England and Wales)
The simmering debate on the subject of gay marriage had been brought to the boil by Cardinal Keith O’Brien’s full-frontal attack on British Prime Minister David Cameron’s pledge to legalise same-sex marriage. Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, Britain’s most senior Roman Catholic cleric O’Brien insisted, “we cannot afford to indulge this madness.” He repeated his strident opposition to gay marriage on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme this morning.
Gay marriage, said O’Brien in The Sunday Telegraph, represented “a grotesque subversion of a universal human right” – the idea, enshrined in law and history, that marriage is between a man and a woman. He accused ministers of being “staggeringly arrogant” in suggesting that churches could choose to “opt out” of holding such services: “No Government,” he insisted, “has the moral authority to dismantle the universally understood meaning of marriage.”
At last year’s Conservative Party conference, David Cameron announced that the Government was to consult over legalising gay marriage, and urged his party to fall in line. He said: “I don’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I’m a Conservative.” The Government will begin a consultation this month on introducing legislation to allow same-sex marriages.
Gay marriage would be a win for the ‘extreme gay lobby.’ Writing at The Daily Mail’s Right Minds comment hub, Janice Atkinson-Small insisted that “‘right-on Dave’ needs to wake up: there’s no need to legalise gay marriage.” “I am a libertarian believing that people should live their lives freely, not hampered by big State but within the law – and sometimes natural law – which I believe is the union between a man and woman as defined by centuries of tradition,” asserted Atkinson-Small. “I have no religion and I am not homophobic, I have many gay friends who all tell me that they are happy with civil partnerships and have no need to go further. However, the extreme gay lobby will win the day on this one. As have the bullies in the animal rights and pro-life lobbies.”
“One of the reasons we are following this re-definition of marriage is that a number of EU countries have instituted gay marriage and where Europe leads, we follow,” lamented Janice Atkinson-Small at The Daily Mail. “Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Spain, Portugal and Norway all have gay marriage. On a separate note, these are all countries that are thinking about or have imposed quotas for women on boards. Sheep spring to mind.”
Existing system is an effective compromise. An editorial in The Telegraph insisted that same-sex marriage is “highly controversial.” The newspaper suggested that Cameron sees the pledge as “a useful way of signifying his party’s modernity, and his willingness to break with those he sees as hidebound social reactionaries. Yet as well as stirring passions on both sides of the debate, the issue is fraught with unintended consequences. It also raises profound questions about our society more broadly: how we raise our children, which family units and values we prize, whether it can ever be government’s role to dictate the nature of such an elemental relationship.” The newspaper acknowledged that “it is understandable for gay people to resent the fact that their loving and committed unions have a different status from others” but concluded that “the existing system is a classic but effective British compromise, managing to offer the substance of marriage, in the shape of civil partnerships, without offending the many who believe that the ceremony itself must be reserved for men and women only.”
Same-sex marriage would enrich the institution of marriage. An editorial in The Times (£) insisted that Cameron “is right to back gay marriage.” “Despite a torrent of criticism from clerical and political opponents of same-sex marriage, Mr Cameron is right. Legal equality of same-sex marriage with the marriage of a man and a woman would be a just and wise reform. It would enrich the institution of marriage, enhance social stability and expand the sum of human happiness.” The newspaper said that, “far from damaging marriage, expanding it to same-sex couples shores it up. Stable gay relationships are a part of national life. If marital law cannot accommodate them, the purpose of marriage will eventually be brought into question.” ”Reforming the law would enrich the lives of same-sex couples who wish to marry in order to affirm by rite that they love and are loved in return. By that commitment, they will enrich the society and culture that their fellow citizens share,” concluded The Times.
O’Brien’s inappropriate ferociousness. An editorial in The Independent reminded that, “church leaders do not own marriage.” The newspaper said that “the ferocity of the language” used by O’Brien in his Telegraph article “almost takes the breath away.” “There will be clerics who reject single-sex marriage on doctrinal grounds – grounds which can themselves be open to different interpretations – but it sits ill with the mantle of leadership for the country’s senior Roman Catholic leader to characterise the policy of an elected Government as ‘madness,’” insisted the newspaper, which concluded that, “the legalisation of gay marriage would remove one of the last obstacles to full homosexual equality before the law and stand as a testament to more enlightened times.”
Civil Partnerships have helped explode prejudices. Writing in The Independent Rev Richard Coles, parish priest in Finedon, Northamptonshire, feared the Cardinal’s heavy-handed intervention “has not halted the onward march of aggressive secularism, but strengthened it.” He expressed “surprise” at O’Brien’s fierce criticism of Civil Partnerships. “I am surprised because the Cardinal lives, in fact, in the same world as me, a world in which gay couples and colleagues and family and friends are not even unusual, let alone bizarre, a world which, since the Civil Partnership Act of 2004, has not fallen apart, but simply showed what we had long suspected: that gay people are not that different from everyone else, and gay relationships are not that different either.” Coles credited Civil Partnerships with helped change social attitudes, “making it difficult for people to sustain a caricature of gay people as ‘disordered’ and “intrinsically evil”, as Roman Catholic teaching puts it, if what they encounter is not something sulphurous from the last days of Sodom, but two people celebrating their exclusive and faithful commitment to each other with a slice of cake and a glass of Prosecco thrown in.”
