We must confront the Cameron government’s homosexual agenda while we can

St John Chrysostom confronted the Empress Eudoxia

The Telegraph reports today that the government has approved the proposal to allow civil partnership ceremonies to be conducted at places of worship. Readers will recall that civil partnerships in English law are legally exclusive to same-sex couples and in practice are used only by homosexual* couples; and have already been given many of the "rights belonging to marriage" in English law. 

It would be entirely wrong for Catholics to fail to oppose the celebration of civil partnerships by denominations other than the Catholic Church (or as present by the civil authorities), on the grounds thast such ceremonies are unlikely to be allowed in Catholic churches. The homosexual lifestyle violates the natural moral law; and the natural moral law binds everyone. It is an ethical matter, not just a religious one. By analogy, here is what the present Pope said in 1987 (when Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) regarding embryo research (my emphases in bold):

"The inviolable right to life of every innocent human individual and the rights of the family and of the institution of marriage constitute fundamental moral values, because they concern the natural condition and integral vocation of the human person; at the same time they are constitutive elements of civil society and its order. For this reason the new technological possibilities which have opened up in the field of biomedicine require the intervention of the political authorities and of the legislator, since an uncontrolled application of such techniques could lead to unforeseeable and damaging consequences for civil society. Recourse to the conscience of each individual and to the self-regulation of researchers cannot be sufficient for ensuring respect for personal rights and public order."

By analogy with the homosexual lifestyle, the government has a duty to forbid civil partnerships - and we must ensure that the government fulfils that duty.

Yes, I am all too aware of how rapidly the homosexual agenda is advancing:

• 3 October: the Home Office announces that passports will now have the option of naming same-sex couples as the passport holder's parents
• 10 October: Andrew Mitchell, the international development secretary, says the government will cut overseas aid to governments which don't respect so-called 'gay rights'
• 23 October: a Christian housing manager is demoted by his employer for opposing gay marriage in a comment on his personal Facebook profile
• 24 October: Tesco announces that it is now a major sponsor of the London Gay Pride festival
• 27 October: the Commonwealth's secretary-general and the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group endorses the homosexual agenda
• 28 October: a politician is voted off a Citizens Advice Bureau board for his opposition to gay marriage.

If, however, we fail to confront governments and other powerful institutions when they back the homosexual agenda, then there is a real danger that that homosexual campaigners will win their argument that "gay is the new black": in other words, that objections to the homosexual agenda will forever more be seen as unacceptable as racism. For example, Peter Tatchell, the notorious homosexual rights campaigner, said recently:

"There would be uproar if the government banned Jewish people from marriage and offered them civil partnerships instead. We would call it an anti-Semitic law; something we would expect in Nazi Germany not democratic Britain. Well, Jews are not banned from marriage but gay people are."

The idea that Catholics should "reframe" questions on homosexuality to make them less "neuralgic" for society is not Catholic. As Pope Benedict said earlier this month (my emphasis in bold):

"Christians have the duty to denounce evils, to attest to and to keep alive the values on which the dignity of the person is founded...".

And the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church says that (emphasis in the original):

“The Church’s social doctrine has the task of proclamation, but also of denunciation ... This social doctrine also entails a duty to denounce, when sin is present...”.

I will blog again soon on how this also applies to the Cameron government's promotion of abortion at home and abroad.

*Why is homosexuality (and sexual ethics generally) important specifically for the pro-life movement? The late Pope John Paul II, the great pro-life champion, taught in no. 97 of his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae that it is an illusion to think that we can build a true culture of human life if we do not offer adolescents and young adults an authentic education in sexuality, and in love, and the whole of life according to their true meaning and in their close interconnection.

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