The story of the Canadian minister who wishes to ban Catholics teaching the evil of abortion under the countries mysogny laws, the black, deaf diversity officer who was suspended for signing a petition for a referendum on "gay marriage", my own MP who wants to ban Christian ministers marrying anyone, if they won't "marry" same sex couples, are all signs of political or legal positivism.
An American priest friend, Fr Z, put up on his blog recently a short video about Western versus Islamic birthrate, I don't know about the States but here it would be considered racist, I ceratainly thought that when I saw it. Cardinal Turkson came in for the same criticism, principly from North Americans Euopeans. It is the same video as was shown in the Synod Hall!
I agree there are lies, damned lies and statistics, and statistics can be managed, massaged and manipulated.
What I see as being a serious problem is the shutting down of debate by political correctness, which is just a gnat's whisker away from forbidding by law. For example, we can't any longer discuss the health problems involved in certain sexual practices, the effects of having both parents working on a child, or having a absent father or multiple partners on the social develpopment of a child. There so many other areas which are simply not spoken about today, it is a new type of fundamentalim.
Listen to this, from yesterday's BBC Today Programme (1.29) it is Mehdi Hasan trying to discuss his problem with abortion with the Guardians, Suzanne Moore. That is where progress seems to be leading us. Debate, as in the case of Cameron's redefinition of marriage will be made impossible, first of all activists screaming at us, then by politicians trailing the bizarre, and then by the constraints of law. So much for Voltaire's: I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.
The growing facism of the illiberal left (even if they are on the right, like Cameron) is quite frightening, it bodes ill for society's cohesion and civilised debate.
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