Showing posts with label Lord Carey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lord Carey. Show all posts

Tuesday, 9 October 2012

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 He seems to have lost the plot as well as the dictionary when he said in response to the press release that was retracted by Nick Clegg over the word bigot he said: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

Monday, 20 February 2012

Do you cultural vandal take this other cultural vandal as your lawfully married husband

Yeah apparently I am now a cultural vandal.

It has nothing to do with the poetry I write. The music that I write, play or perform. The plays I have been in, though I suspect the one I am writing would have had Mary Whitehouse in a tizzy.

No apparently my cultural vandalism stems from love. Lord Carey says so.



He says the Government has no mandate to define marriage, but what mandate does he, or the Church of England, or Coalition for Marriage have to not allow faith and non-faith groups that want to allow equal marriage.

Apparently the web of family will be affected if marriage is redefined. So if this gay Christian uncle were to get married, in a church setting, before God and the people present, would it unravel the web of my family? I trust that I am smart enough to only fall for somebody who would get on with my nephews, would enjoy as much as I do taking them to places, seeing them read or watch new things and answer their questions. If I didn't end up settling for someone like that you have permission to shoot me. Of course bringing someone into the family is an important step just as many years ago my brother brought my sister-in-law into the family (and with her, her parents and sister).

But apparently Lord Carey has spoken to some gay friends who say they are worried that redefining marriage would affect the structure of marriage. I look at the number of people LGBT or straight who don't see it as affecting family relationships in a negative way but as a positive.

Basing any public opinion based purely on the opinion of friends is not a very dodgy way to go about things, they are more likely to agree with your point of view or not be so outspoken about something, especially if your opinion on something is strongly held and publicly known. Yet apparently according to Lord Carey's statement his friends comments are the only evidence that he basing his opinions on. I thought he was supposed to be a man of books and learning to reach the pinnacle of the Church of England.

In the meantime TWIMC SGM cultural vandal 42 GSOH, NM NK NS former athlete, politically active likes NIOO, good food and books,  WLTM similar for LTR possibly leading to M WTR

Read also  Andrew Page (AKA Scottish Liberal) with his take on the same subject.