Dear Lord Carey reach for your dictionary

So at the Coalition for Marriage rally on the fringe of the Conservative Party conference the former Archbishop of Canterbury resorted to inferring many involved in the campaign for equal marriage Nazis including the Deputy Prime Minister. He seems to have lost the plot as well as the dictionary when he said in response to the press release that was retracted by Nick Clegg over the word bigot he said:

"Let’s have a sensible debate about this, not call people names. Let us remember the Jews in Nazi Germany. What started against them was when they started to be called names.

"And that was the first stage towards that totalitarian state. We have to resist them. We treasure democracy. We treasure our Christian inheritance and we want to debate this in a fair way."

Apart from the fact that Lord Carey, like so many others, forgets that the Holocaust included not just the Jews but the gays, there is also the mistaking of what totalitarianism is especially in light of how equal marriage is being discussed and introduced here across the UK.

Now a dictionary definition:

to·tal·i·tar·i·an  (t-tl-târ-n) 

adj. Of, relating to, being, or imposing a form of government in which the political authority exercises absolute and centralized control over all aspects of life, the individual is subordinated to the state, and opposing political and cultural expression is suppressed from the Free Dictionary

So let me get this straight. Those wanting legislation that allows everyone the right to marry in a civil manner and allows the religious groups that want to do so to also carry out same sex marriage is totalitarian. Isn't treasuring that Christian inheritance to the extent of imposing your will as the only way just that. They have used words such as unnatural, not traditional against same sex marriages. And indeed in the recent debate in Stormont politicians said the idea was 'greedy', in it for 'temporary gain', a threat to 'civil and religious liberties', 'pointless', a 'worthless course', a 'slippery slope'.

The sensible debate about this is that there are some religious groups in this nation that are prepared to carry out same-sex marriages. What has been proposed for England & Wales, in Scotland and was debated here in Northern Ireland was the lifting of the States prohibition on marriage being between a man and a woman only. There was no lifting of the number of people nor the inclusion of a creature of another species in the TWO that would be married. Also in none of the three places this is being discussed is there any requirement on religious groups to carry it out, that is left to the governance of those religious groups separately.

So far from being totalitarian the equal marriage proposals are not centralising all control on this issue.

• Each religious groups governing body is free to make up its own mind. 
•  Religious freedom is not being suppressed either by the state or by any other branch of religion. 
• Individuals are not being coerced into whom they can marry although the opposite is true as Michelle McIlveen stated during her speech in Stormont:

"Moreover, everyone is free to choose to marry.  There is no bar or prohibition on marriage. People are free to marry provided they marry someone who is of the opposite sex."

• Gay people of faith have the right to invite their deity into a marriage which they cannot do in a civil partnership again no suppression of civil or cultural expression

So just who is totalitarian?

• The Church is seeking control on civil society
• It wants outright control on marriage something it hasn't had since civil marriage was allowed outside of the Anglican Church
• The individual is subordinate to the Churches teachings even those that do not follow those teachings or who view them in a different light
• Opposing political views, even if they allow the churches views freedom, are to be blocked at all costs