Silence continues south of the border, as far as the hierarchy are concerned (why is that?), in Scotland there are continued angry rumblings , now the focus seems to be on France as far as same sex marriage legislation is concerned.
I have been wondering about the statement Nick Clegg didn't make, but his advisors thought he should, that I am "bigot". There was some talk about a Mass here at St Mary Magdalen's for the Lib-Dems when they are here for their conference, it faded when I pointed out that we couldn't have a party big-wig "preaching" or "addressing" the congregation. Frankly, the Lib-Dems are so unpopular I felt that people would boycott the Church if we had a Mass for them.
But I would have enjoyed addressing "bigotry" in the presence of Lib-Dems, or even whether my views against "same sex marriage" actually based on my religious belief. The truth is they aren't. Yes I do believe some sexual practices are mortally sinful and I would rather people didn't do them, I believe the same about contraception, adultery and fornication, as well as defrauding widows and orphans and depriving workers of a just wage but I manage to live reasonably happily in an environment where that is taking place.
What concerns me above all is that government arrogates to itself the ability to define marriage, I am against it because I am a conservative, at least in this area but not in the area of the workers right to his or her wages, because of that I would have difficulty ever voting for Dave Cameron and his coetibus. Those who claim ssm will lead to bigamy, bestiality and every other possibility are most probably right, simply because governments nowadays rule by whim and seem happy to be involved in social experiment, what ever the electorate actually want or vote for. Tearing up the traditional concept of marriage is going to seriously undermine the idea of family. Every week I see children, desperate for love, whose lives have been damaged by divorce and family break-up.
For those bigots like me, we see that ssm is going to make traditional western (Christian?) teaching about marriage, but more importantly about the family (mum, dad and children), impossible in our schools. It is going to make children, traditionally, the result of a man and women bound together in marriage, merely a possibility, a lifestyle choice, rather than the natural consequence of marriage. This will damage not strengthen the family.
The parody of the gay couple not being able to decide between a poodle or a child seems to be where we are heading. Children begotten either through the natural process or by sperm donor in the case of a lesbian couple or by adoption or surrogacy in the case of a male couple are not a consequence of the relationship but an addition to it, bolted on to it. This is pushing children into the status of a commodity. This I find deeply worrying.
The "gay" catch phrase "if you don't agree with gay marriage, then don't marry a homosexual" or the governments continued promise that "Christians won't be forced officiate at same sex marriages" is just plain daft and disingenuous. A little like, "if you don't agree with drugs don't use them". This type of argument springs from the idea of "there is no such thing as society" that we are not bound together, that we do not suffer the consequences of one another's actions. Indeed this argument is really centred on the unimportance of the family in modern political and social thinking. It is part of the movement in society from "us" to "me". It is essentially egocentric and consumerist, I can't help but think that it is in this context that Cameron is for "gay marriage because he is a Conservative", it is Conservatism that smacks of decadent Capitalism, economic theory that sees human beings as individual consumer/production units, that pushes non-productive children to the margins.
SSM seems to me as much an assault on the family as the Chinese "one child" policy, it is within this context which has proved both disastrous and monstrous that this legislation is being introduced. The bigotry surely lies with a government that believes it has the right to control every human institution.
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