The Daily Telegraph has run another interesting comment today on the Lords' ammendment to the Equalities Bill. It seems the changes which will likely force Anglican clerics, and indeed rabbis, Free Church ministers, and even imams (somehow I doubt the latter) to carry out same-sex union ceremonies or blessings in a place of worship, contrary to the will of either the church or minister in question, is an embarassment for the government. How so? After all, Gordon Brown's cabinet is the most secular ever. The embarassment, it seems, is nothing to do with substance but rather timing. A clash with the Church and unpalatable headlines is not what the government wants as we head into a general election in the next eight weeks.
So much for Gordon Brown's "moral compass" and his claim, as a son of the manse, to be driven by the morality imputed to him by his cleric father. I thought Tony Blair's administration did a real hatchet job on people and institutions and of faith and didn't see how it could get much worse. But of course I'd forgotten the old Stalinist days in Soviet Russia, where the state even managed to shape the way you thought and spoke. It's time to get rid of Brown now, for the sake of the country in general, but also because if reelected he and the people around him can and will do so yet more damage in terms of Christian values and freedom. The problem, of course, is who to vote for. Certainly the lesser of two evils, David Cameron is nonetheless some way down this ditching of Christian values route himself, though it is hard to see how he could be quite as antagonistic towards Christians as Brown has been. Perhaps some of it is rhetoric to win votes, but if so I suspect he will lose many others. The Libs' Calamity (self-confessed atheist) Clegg would likely seek to rival Brown's secularising agenda. Of the minor parties, the Greens are hardly Christian-friendly and UKIP is unlikely to make much headway. Pity we can't vote for the best among the main parties, all rolled-up into a Christian bloc, and I, for one, will be looking carefully at the alternatives to my sitting MP, who in correspondence between us nailed his colours pretty firmly to the mast.
3 comments:
We mustn't forget that much of this has been brought about by so called "religious" groups:-
Quakers call for law change on same-sex weddings
Bearing this in mind, one of the best comments I have come across is this one:-
If the Quakers and the Unitarians want to register civil partnerships in their places of worship, then that is a matter for them, and not for the state. Traditional Christians will be horrified at such things happening, but their horror should be directed not at the state for permitting these things, but at the Quakers and Unitarians for wishing to do them. If traditional Christians want freedom to proclaim that homosexual activity is wrong, and to exclude practising homosexuals from their membership, then they should be willing to allow freedom to religious bodies which think otherwise.
What is this country coming to?
This may seem slightly pessimistic but it looks like things are about to get worse and worse for Christians. Especially since now all the guys in charge are secularists who don't want to offend anyone who is a majority and will make them unpopular.
Rather than being truly liberal and allowing us all the right to free speech it seems that communism is becoming too tempting for out ‘liberal’ government.
Yes Gabi, it is a paradox. We seem to have the most illiberal liberal government ever.....
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