Cardinal Cretin

By AM Tuesday, March 6, 2012

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But the overwhelming dominant norm of traditional marriage was enabled to be precisely that, a norm, because anything outside of that was treated as profoundly abnormal and either rejected or punished.  Male homosexual practice was criminalised, unmarried mothers institutionalised or shunned, the children of the outside the norm families similarly treated – anything that did not fit the dominant cultural norm was to be jailed, institutionalised or forced to flee – Irish Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly

There has been no shortage of Scottish bigots over the years. We witnessed enough of them on the streets of the North, armed and dangerous, in regiments like the Black Watch. And here they are tooling up once more with the weapons of prejudice, poised to strike again. In their sites this time around is that ‘grotesque’ act of gay marriage. Keith O’Brien, the cardinal of Scotland has targeted those societies that have opted to put a halt to discriminating against gay people. For allowing gays the same rights to marriage as straight people, they have in his warped world shamed themselves.

O’Brien preaches that if the current British government legalises gay marriage UK society would degenerate further into immorality. Which only means really that society would depart from Catholic teaching. That is hardly likely to make it more immoral. Conversely, it enhances morality by extending and deepening the concept of human rights to ever more people.

Moreover, concealing clerical rape of children – a practice O’Brien’s church seemed to treat as a sacrament  - is a clear act of moral degeneracy, whereas consensual gay relationships are just what many people do: as harmless as watching a game of football, and for those so inclined very rewarding, developmental and crucial to their human happiness.

Describing gay marriage as a 'grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right', O’Brien, echoing Tory MP Peter Bone who dismissed the proposal as ‘completely nuts’, called it ‘madness’. Then he went on to talk insanely of the ‘tyranny of tolerance.’ He must long for the intolerant days of the Inquisition and for a bygone era when women could be burned as witches because the clergy of the day could not tolerate their views or behaviour.

Yet it is precisely the culture of human rights that O’Brien seeks to subvert.  And the ‘tyranny of tolerance’ he tirades against is in large part the product of Catholic intolerance.  As Emily O’Reilly, the Irish Ombudswoman in her recent address to the Accord conference, argued on both counts:

A culture of human rights, added to a national revulsion, a national shame at how we treated many of those who did not fit the norm, has enabled an increasingly dominant live and let live, be happy, go your own way, follow your own dreams culture.

One of O’Brien’s prejudices was expressed as ‘if same-sex marriage is enacted into law what will happen to the teacher who wants to tell pupils that marriage can only mean – and has only ever meant – the union of a man and a woman?’

Well, simple, really. They can explain that what they previously taught was a prejudice that can no longer be stood over, pretty much as the earth is flat can no longer be stood over. The teachers who once taught that Galileo and Copernicus were heretics no longer teach it. Hardly a problem of insurmountable dimensions.

Taking the cardinal to task Dan Hodges simply contended that:

O’Brien could have attempted to explain, reason and persuade. Instead, he chose to go blasting in with all the tact and subtlety of a Chicago mobster. Marriage is my turf: the rest of you better just shut up and back off.

It is always the same with the dogmatists armed with the dubious insights of their own particular holy book. Luckily, as Hodges further asserted, in democratic societies the rule of thumb is that ‘the government responds to the will of the people, not the will of the clergy.’

At root O’Brien is trying to inflict his religious opinion on other people who don’t share it, don’t want to share it, and have an opinion entirely at odds with his own. Imagine the manager of Celtic seeking to outlaw support for Rangers just because of his own belief in Celtic. Blue would be banned from the streets of Glasgow, green and white alone would become the norm.

Society is much better off without the type of prejudice being pedalled by those men of god who seem both unwilling and unable to step outside their own inverted moral universe, a dark place aptly described by Musa Okwonga, who points out that O’Brien’s god:

is furious and reactionary, jealously guarding His turf.  He will make for a domineering partner, easily angered when you step outside your pre-defined lines ...  But we haven’t heard similarly vehement views on God’s behalf about, say, poverty or human rights in recent days.  There is nothing that seems to get O’Brien’s God so angry as gays getting married.

Vindictive sort of god that. No surprise he allowed for hell in his grand plan for creation and intends filling it with gays forever and ever and ever, amen.