Labour’s New Morality
January 30th, 2007 by Stephen
Tony Blair’s Labour Party today has refused to allow exemptions to Catholic adoption agencies regarding placing of children with homosexual couples. Instead they have given the agencies 21 months to comply with the law (which at least makes it no longer Tony Blair’s problem).
On BBC Radio 4′s Today programme this morning, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor said:
“There is legislation and legislation and some legislation, however well intended, in fact does create a new kind of morality, a new kind of norm – as this does.”
“The legislation about the adoption by homosexual people of children, it does seem to me we are having a new norm for what marriage is, because I think normally children should be brought up by a father and a mother and I think that we hold that that is extremely important.
“The government has a right to legislate and homosexual couples are also able to adopt in other agencies but we want to hold onto this principle.”
It seems that we are heading down the French secular model – where religious expression and morality is to be outlawed for the sake of inclusiveness – without realising that the inclusivity is sacrificed in the process.
Notice what the Catholic adoption agencies are *not* saying. They are not saying that adoption to gay couples should be outlawed. They are not saying that it should be illegal for gay people to adopt children. If they were, then we could say that they are not being inclusive. But rather, the government is saying that a Christian body may not act to improve the common good in the British state, unless they are forced to act against their own moral values – in a way that they honestly believe to be to the detyriment of the state.
That is a new morality which outlaws the old. (and Labour knows all about outlawing things. They have outalwed more things and destroyed more civil liberties than any peace time administration).
The sooner this bunch of crooks (Tony cash-for-honours Bliar), liars, warmongers and career politicians (voted in by a mere 36% of voters – the lowest share of the vote ever received by a governing party) gets out of office, the better.
[...] Regarding the government’s new morality: This completely fails to take into account the views and beliefs of all those involved. The idea that new Labour — which has got every second thing wrong and is back-tracking on extended drinking hours, is in a mess over this cash-for-peerages business, cannot keep all its prisons under control — the idea that new Labour can come up with a new morality which it forces on the Catholic Church after 2,000 years; I am sorry, this is amazing arrogance on the part of the Government. [...]
Wow, I’m shocked. It’s very interesting to read this from a native Englisher…especially as I have no idea of your politics except that Tony Blair is pretty well respected here in America. Based on what? I assume his backing of us in the war against terror? Though with everyone (almost) here sick of the war, that would even be a flimsy reason?
A native Briton maybe… Wales and England are seperate nations with Great Britain.
I think you are right, that it is Tony Blair’s backing of Bush that has him respected by supporters of Bush. I happen to think that this backing of Bush was a huge foreign policy disaster.
In some ways, no doubt, Blair thought backing of Bush was his destiny! A huge issue in the middle East is that the vast majority of oil reserves are in Shia dominated areas (southern Iraq, Iran, and northern Saudi Arabia). The reason Britain and the US supported Saddam Hussein, provided him with chemical weapons and stood by whilst he ruthlessly put down a Shia rebellion after the last gulf war was because strategists fear the falling of the major oil fields in the middle east into an anti western greater Shia state.
Furthermore, if the US was going to invade Iraq anyway, and thus carve out new agreements over the control of the oil reserves, the UK would want to be in on this, rather than frozen out (as France and Russia were).
Add to this the historic support by Britain for many of the US foreign policy ventures, and Tony Blair would see himself as having no choice but to fall in line on this issue.
But there was a choice. He knew that the WMD arguments were bogus, and that no level of compliance from Saddam could halt the war. He knew that the undertaking was illegal (and was advised of such by the attorney General). He should have been aware of the law of unintended consequences, and the fact that no state is willingly occuied by a foreign power. He should have known the parallels with the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and the eventual ignominiuos Russian withdrawal. He also knew that support of the US does not necessarily equate with support of the current political administration.
Most of all, as the servant of our Christian head of state, he should have been aware that violence is not the answer for the world today, and that almost no violent interventions in the world have benign consequences. Moreover that people will die in his name, and in the name of the people he claims to represent.
He also knew that a majority in the UK opposed the war, which should have given him pause for thought if he understands the principle of democracy.
But support Bush he did. He was wrong to do so, as he has been wrong in so very many things.