I'm sure, twelve hours after the
offending article was published – in which Cardinal Keith O'Brien (President of the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland and
Britain’s most senior Catholic) aired his views on the potential legalisation of same-sex marriage – that there will have been no less than eight million angry blog posts in retaliation, all of which are likely to be better than this. However, having read the article on the first leg of my eight-hour journey back to York from Winchester this morning, and having spent the following two hours hand-writing a three-page long strongly-worded rebuttal on a wobbly train tray-table, it would seem the most phenomenal waste of my efforts not to type it up. Plus, an hour of angry typing will be excellent catharsis for any deep-seated frustration I may be harbouring.
I also appreciate how special-snowflake-y and horribly appropriative it is of someone who identifies relatively low on the Kinsey scale to write a blogpost about this. I really, really don't want it to come across like that - I just give a shit, and wanted to write some words to that effect.
And thus begins a paragraph-by-paragraph dissection of the Cardinal's article, with a something of a linguistic, capslocky, sweary slant.
Those of us who were not in favour of civil partnership, believing that such
relationships are harmful to the physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing of
those involved
(Alas, the blogpost should really begin with an intelligent deconstruction of the Cardinal's arguments, but since his does not offer any kind of logical, sensible argument in the first place, I shan't offer him the same courtesy.) Of course! For someone who identifies as a man to be in a loving relationship with someone who identifies as a woman is a healthy, safe and wonderful thing, but should their partner identify as a man (or vice versa), it immediately becomes disease-ridden, breakdown-inducing and spirit-crushing? Excuse me while I laugh so hard I cough up a lung.
Since all the legal rights of marriage are already available to homosexual
couples, it is clear that this proposal is not about rights, but rather is
an attempt to redefine marriage for the whole of society at the behest of a
small minority of activists.
Well whadd'ya know? The Cardinal starts out by being kind of right! (Bear with me.) I mean, his point is phrased horribly, but he's got the gist: it is about redefining marriage. Many non-heterosexual people don't want to get married; aligning themselves with a tradition that has ostracised them for hundreds of years is not something they fancy doing - completely, completely understandable. But some do, and this is where the Cardinal's point falls short: it is also about rights. It's about the right to get married, a right which is denied many people for no good reason. And yes, despite the pejorative connotations of the phrase 'behest of a small minority of activists', it is absolutely about redefining marriage for the whole society. Why the Cardinal thinks this is somehow inherently bad, and can thus stand alone as an argument, is beyond me.
Redefining marriage will have huge implications for what is taught in our
schools, and for wider society. It will redefine society since the
institution of marriage is one of the fundamental building blocks of
society. The repercussions of enacting same-sex marriage into law will be
immense.
And he's done it again! The Cardinal speaks the truth! I concede, his intended tone is drawn, apocalyptic and disparaging - I imagine it could be read like the voiceover for one of those 'natural disaster hits NYC and only Mark Whalberg can save the world with a mixture of lifting things and blank looks into the distance' sort of film trailers. However, try reading the same paragraph in the voice of a child in the car on the way to the pound going to pick up their new puppy. That adequately expresses how I feel about the whole thing. Redefining marriage will have phenomenal consequences for society – phenomenal, brilliant, boundary-breaking consequences that will shape the future for the next generation of young Britons.
But can we simply redefine terms at a whim? Can a word whose meaning has been clearly understood in every society throughout history suddenly be changed to mean something else?
In short: yes. That's the brilliant thing about words: they change, evolve, move with the times. Language change isn't the issue here, and the Cardinal
really needs to stop masking his prejudices behind linguistic euphemism.
If same-sex marriage is enacted into law what will happen to the teacher who
wants to tell pupils that marriage can only mean – and has only ever meant –
the union of a man and a woman?
Well, Cardy my sweet, they will tell those pupils that marriage means the union of two people, regardless of gender, because THAT WILL BE THE TRUTH. If the law redefines marriage in this way, and a teacher claims otherwise, they will be
lying. This isn't about belief, it's about what is the legal case, and in this hypothetical future, the only answer will be to explain that marriage is not restricted by the gender of either spouse. If a child asked a teacher 'what is murder?' and they answered 'it's when a person tickles another person with a feather', that would be a
lie, just like telling a child that marriage is only for heterosexual couples. I'm afraid, to put it bluntly and a little childishly, that teachers – imparters of knowledge, not arbitrary moral judgements – will have to suck it up.
Will both teacher and pupils simply become the next victims of
the tyranny of tolerance...?
I can't even finish this quote, gobsmacked as I am that the phrase 'tyranny of tolerance' can even exist in real life. Good Christ I hope it doesn't catch on as a buzzphrase for this bullshit. How dare a nation suggest for a second that each and every one of its citizens be treated equally! Quelle horreur! What of us who want to direct hate and abuse at an arbitrarily selected group of the population? We're being oppressed, I tell you, oppressed!
Fuck off.
In Article 16 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, marriage is
defined as a relationship between men and women.
I'll let the selfsame Declaration of Human Rights speak for itself (and me) here:
Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and
rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act
towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Article 2: Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth
in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race,
colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national
or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no
distinction shall be made on the basis of the political,
jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to
which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust,
non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.Many people will spout back article 18 at me
, here – 'Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion'. I don't deny people like the Cardinal the freedom to hold their horrid beliefs (being involved in religion quite heavily in the past, religious freedom is something I believe deserves a great deal of respect – though the issues and technicalities of this are lengthy enough to warrant their own blogpost). What I – and the Declaration – do disallow is the right of those beliefs to impinge upon the rights of another person, which is what the Cardinal is advocating. He believes that his personal belief is enough to prevent certain people from enjoying the same freedoms as others. How about no?
Instead, their attempt to redefine reality is given a polite hearing, their
madness is indulged. Their proposal represents a grotesque subversion of a
universally accepted human right.
Dude, 'reality' used to constitute a person's right to keep slaves, or murder people. Redefining reality is what moves our society closer towards freedom and fairness for all. I'm finding it hard to comment upon the extreme stupidity of this particular quote, but perhaps it need explicitly saying:
Dear Cardinal,
Your proposal represents a 'grotesque subversion' of the universally accepted #1 tip-top human right that 'all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights'.
Love, Hannah xoxo
As an institution, marriage long predates the existence of any state or
government. It was not created by governments and should not be changed by
them. Instead, recognising the innumerable benefits which marriage brings to
society, they should act to protect and uphold marriage, not attack or
dismantle it.
Who gives a rose-tinted fuck if marriage predates the government under which we operate? So did murder, but I don't hear any complaints about governments imposing pretty strict 'don't kill people' regulations. Marriage is a legally binding procedure, the technicalities of which are in the remit of the government. If the government can offer various legal benefits to married couples, they can sure as hell alter the technicalities of who can marry whom in the first place.
And, hello, the government clearly do recognise these 'innumerable benefits' (issues I have with these so-called inherent benefits notwithstanding), and hope to open them up to everyone, so that everyone may benefit, and we can all bask in this marital bliss the Cardinal speaks so highly of, should we wish to.
...yet today advancing a traditional understanding of marriage risks
one being labelled an intolerant bigot.
You said it, Cardy.
It has been damaged and undermined over the course of a generation, yet
marriage has always existed in order to bring men and women together so that
the children born of those unions will have a mother and a father.
This brings us to the one perspective which seems to be completely lost or
ignored: the point of view of the child. All children deserve to begin life
with a mother and father; the evidence in favour of the stability and
well-being which this provides is overwhelming and unequivocal. It cannot be
provided by a same-sex couple, however well-intentioned they may be.
The sheer, staggering arrogance of words like these kind of make me want to throw up in my mouth a little bit. Is the Cardinal trying to suggest that the potential for love, care and compassion is rendered null and void should we choose to pursue a life with a partner of the same gender? Or perhaps he's saying that those children raised by homosexual parents, in single-parent households, by aunts, uncles, grandparents and other relatives, or by any guardian of any kind, have not received the same level of care as those from a mother/father home, regardless of the stability or happiness of this heterosexual family foundation? Now that really is intolerant, illogical and incomprehensible bigotry.
It would create a society which deliberately
chooses to deprive a child of either a mother or a father.
Newsflash: a court of law can already do that (should the parent be deemed unfit), as can a person choosing to parent alone, whether through surrogacy, adoption or using a sperm bank. And, I repeat: why is this a bad thing?
Other dangers exist. If marriage can be redefined so that it no longer means a
man and a woman but two men or two women, why stop there? Why not allow
three men or a woman and two men to constitute a marriage, if they pledge
their fidelity to one another? If marriage is simply about adults who love
each other, on what basis can three adults who love each other be prevented
from marrying?
Possibly a more controversial opinion here, but if all parties are happy and consenting, would this be so terrible? I'm inclined to say it wouldn't, but I'm more inclined to say it is none of my damn business, and no right of mine to dictate what people can and cannot do with their lives.
In November 2003, after a court decision in Massachusetts to legalise gay
marriage, school libraries were required to stock same-sex literature;
primary schoolchildren were given homosexual fairy stories such as King &
King. Some high school students were even given an explicit manual of
homosexual advocacy entitled The Little Black Book: Queer in the 21st
Century. Education suddenly had to comply with what was now deemed “normal”.
Has the Cardinal ever seen the figures for LGBT teen suicide? Can he not fathom that this kind of early visibility and normalisation of what is – shock horror! – NORMAL human sexuality might help a child with confused sexual feelings to not feel alone, ostracised and driven to self-abuse? It is precisely telling children that non-heterosexual behaviour is normal that can save lives in the long run. You're not warping children's minds, you're widening them.
Imagine for a moment that the Government had decided to legalise slavery but
assured us that “no one will be forced to keep a slave”.
Would such worthless assurances calm our fury? Would they justify dismantling
a fundamental human right? Or would they simply amount to weasel words
masking a great wrong?
I come to the Cardinal's next point rather serendipitously, having forgotten what he'd written while making my former point about slavery. How odd that we both compare the legalisation of same-sex marriage to the abolition of slavery, but in such different ways. The Cardinal seems to be forgetting that LGBT people and slaves are the oppressed minorities in these cases, and he instead aligns the slaves with those poor souls who believe that marriage should be a strictly heterosexual institution (a group that cannot, by any stretch of the imagination be described as 'Christians', as so many firmly advocate same-sex marriage, and so many non-Christians don't.)
The Universal Declaration on Human Rights is crystal clear: marriage is a
right which applies to men and women, “the family is the natural and
fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society
and the State”.
This universal truth is so self-evident that it shouldn’t need to be repeated.
If the Government attempts to demolish a universally recognised human right,
they will have forfeited the trust which society has placed in them and
their intolerance will shame the United Kingdom in the eyes of the world.
One of the things that is linguistically confusing about the Cardinal's argument is his consistent invocation of the phrase 'human right'. According to the phrasing of the declarations, article 16 is as follows:
1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race,
nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family.
They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and
at its dissolution.
2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.The Cardinal talks of 'dismantling a fundamental human right' twice, as if legalising same-sex marriage will somehow impede upon heterosexual couples' ability to marry freely and unhindered. Should same-sex marriage be legalised, this will not be the case – the only thing anybody may lose is the ability to discriminate and dictate who is free to declare and ceremonially cement their love in a public ceremony with friends and family present. The only thing the Cardinal is losing is his right to be such a dickhead, and – as far as I can tell – the Universal Declaration does not support 'the right to be a massive dickhead', and as such his invocation of the statute is nonsensical and erroneous.
I was going to say that, in direct contrast to old Cardy's views, legalising same-sex marriage could make the UK a bastion of tolerance from which other governments may take lead. I then stopped to think about the word 'tolerance', and it left a bad taste in my mouth. 'Tolerance' smacks of begrudgingly putting up with something – the way I tolerate takeaways who put ketchup on my burgers without me requesting it. We shouldn't tolerate same-sex marriage, we should fucking celebrate it; celebrate the slow but optimistic progress towards a society where sexuality and gender have no bearing on how one person treats another, not does affect the rights, liberties and opportunities afforded to us all.
