Man With Invisible Friend Condemns Government Madness
Among the more insidious legacies of the Reverend Blair is the use of cuddly liberal terms of discourse in the service of a swivel-eyed hard-right agenda: privatisation in the name of choice, universal surveillance in the name of freedom, wog-bombing in the name of peace, and so forth. Daveybloke's Cuddly Conservatives have used the same strategy, much to the frustration of the old-style Thatcherites to whom a jackboot with a smile painted on it just isn't a proper jackboot any more. Now the Catholic church, in the person of Cardinal Keith O'Brien, has got around to trying it as well, with results that may charitably be described as mixed.
O'Brien, who has compared those who terminate unwanted pregnancies to lunatics who go around shooting schoolchildren, foamed in the Sunday Torygraph that extending a universally accepted human right to the objectively disordered would be a "grotesque subversion" of the right in question; much as the extension of freedom of worship to English Catholics was a grotesque subversion of religious tolerance, I presume. The eminent gentleman also proclaimed that gay marriage would "create a society which deliberately chooses to deprive a child of either a mother or a father" and went on to paint an apocalyptic picture of a future in which marriage is further redefined: "Why not allow three men or a woman and two men to constitute a marriage, if they pledge their fidelity to one another?" To which child-killing Nazi psychotics like myself can only respond, with mild consternation: Well, why not indeed?
Fortunately for Cardinal O'Brien and allied voices of reason and sanity like Lord Carey of Blathering-in-the-Dotage, the matter is in the hands of the Deputy Conservative equalities minister, Lynne Featherstone; which means it is about as likely to happen as anything else that might possibly risk being considered liberal or democratic.
O'Brien, who has compared those who terminate unwanted pregnancies to lunatics who go around shooting schoolchildren, foamed in the Sunday Torygraph that extending a universally accepted human right to the objectively disordered would be a "grotesque subversion" of the right in question; much as the extension of freedom of worship to English Catholics was a grotesque subversion of religious tolerance, I presume. The eminent gentleman also proclaimed that gay marriage would "create a society which deliberately chooses to deprive a child of either a mother or a father" and went on to paint an apocalyptic picture of a future in which marriage is further redefined: "Why not allow three men or a woman and two men to constitute a marriage, if they pledge their fidelity to one another?" To which child-killing Nazi psychotics like myself can only respond, with mild consternation: Well, why not indeed?
Fortunately for Cardinal O'Brien and allied voices of reason and sanity like Lord Carey of Blathering-in-the-Dotage, the matter is in the hands of the Deputy Conservative equalities minister, Lynne Featherstone; which means it is about as likely to happen as anything else that might possibly risk being considered liberal or democratic.
3 Comments:
At 8:18 pm ,
Madame X said...
On this side of the Pond, "religious liberty" is now being defined as the right of Christians to prevent others from access to birth control. So they must be receiving the same newsletter.
At 8:44 pm ,
Philip said...
I recall reading somewhere that on your side of the Pond certain death-penalty advocates were arguing that "cruel and unusual punishment" wasn't the gassing or the electrocution or the injection, but the frequently long and traumatic waiting on Death Row that resulted from inconveniences like the right to appeal. I don't know if it worked, but it's wonderful logic if you can get it.
At 10:51 pm ,
Madame X said...
You make your arguments wherever you find them, especially in the wake of the Supremes deciding that it had to be cruel AND unusual, and not simply one or the other. What may end capital punishment in America is the realization of its cost and not any appeal to morality or the complete absence of deterrent factor.
Under the every cloud has a silver lining theory, the shortage of lethal injection drugs has resulted in shelter dogs in Texas enjoying a temporary reprieve.
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