Charles Moore has written an excellent column in today’s Telegraph, describing the country’s obsession with equality as ‘mad, bad and dangerous’.
In a week where equality is going to be at the top of the political agenda – it’s worth remembering that the concept of equality is not the same as homogeneity. To treat people equally does not equate to treating them absolutely identically, regardless of circumstances. As a mother of four children between the ages of 8 and 5 months, I undisputedly love them and treat them equally. According to the principles of equality laid down by advocates of gay marriage, treating someone equally is treating them in exactly the same way as one would treat another.
That clearly doesn’t work – should I treat my 8 year old in the same way as the baby? Should I have bought exactly the same Christmas presents for every single child, not taking their age into account? Is it unfair to have bought the baby a symbolic cuddly teething blanket and the eight year old a more expensive present? Or should I ensure that all the children are bought the same presents for their respective birthdays, so they all get say, a wooden railway for their second birthday because that’s what the eldest child had for hers?
Treating people identically regardless of circumstances is the cause of great injustice. We don’t, for example, allocate benefits or state help to people identically, without first taking their situation and individual circumstances into account.
The Equal Marriage Bill is unjust and perpetuates the very inequality it is supposed to remedy. It treats ‘gay marriages’ in an entirely separate way to heterosexual ones, in that a straight couple has recourse to divorce on the grounds of non-consumation and adultery, the concepts of which do not apply to gay couples. A straight couple can divorce due to non-consummation, inherently proving that marriage was ordained for the procreation of children – why else does the law recognise the sexual element?
If ‘gay marriage’ solves inequality, why does it then propose a version of marriage that still does not meet the standards of behaviour required by a straight couple. The answer is that cannot, because ‘gay marriage’ is in itself a legal fiction and impossible under natural law.
The picture says it all. Justice is ensuring that children have a legal framework that recognises that they have a physical and biological relationship to their birth parents and that supports the rights of children to be brought up, supported, nurtured and loved by their biological parents. Justice does not deny the rights and needs of a vulnerable child in favour of the desires of a set of adults.
The Catechesis of Caroline 
It was a great article and I emailed Charles (he is in my parish). I forwarded this onto him
Dominie Stemp
http://dominiestemp.blogspot.co.uk Sent from my iPhone
Please read and pass on…
ROSARY TOMORROW, 5th February, 12 am GMT, FOR THE DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE
Tomorrow (5th of February), the first bill proposing same-sex marriage is going to be heard in British Parliament. I ask you to join me, and many others, in the praying of a rosary tomorrow to ask for Our Lady’s intercession in this. We are aiming to pray together at 12 am, noon (GMT) tomorrow. Pray whatever you are able to do – a decade, a Mystery, the full Rosary, even a short prayer to Our Lady -to beg for her help.
It is our hope that if Catholics pray together for this, we can gain Our Lady’s intercession in this dark hour.
Please pass the message on any way you can! Email, blog, text, social media. 12 am tomorrow – a worldwide rosary for the defense of marriage.
God Bless.
Maria Kolbe
Do you think it was wise for a Protestant country to put through laws that put Roman Catholicism on an equal footing with the Establish Church of England? Some would say that was equality gone too far…
Given the divorce rate is falling in the UK (tho’ rising in the over 50s – those raised in far less liberal and more religious times…) and societies that have gay-marriage tend in the main to be more socially wholesome (lower divorce, teen pregnancy and lone parent rates in many – and far less crime, social inequality, better life chances for children etc.) and that even if this legislation goes ahead at the most it is going mean up to 5 people in every 1,000 will live in ‘gay-marriages’ it is rather sad that conservative Christians haven’t been able to muster their collective voice of protest for something a little more worthwhile.
I’m no fan of same-sex marriage – but I am even less of a fan of the nastiness on the part of many so-called Christians and their obsession with the topic. Given the divorce rate even among the faithful was pretty poor long before gay-marriage was mentioned I think as usual some Christians are playing the wicked game of scape-goating and looking for easy answers to issues that are far more complex.
If we’re not careful we could end up with an American styled Christian voice – A ‘Thou Shalt Not’ that has a disproportionate interest in low-personal cost piety, pointing the finger here and there at this or that ‘social ill’ (often at convenient minorities that have been traditionally the locus of prejudice) while in the very same states, where church attendance is highest and Christianity has a very real and strong political voice and place within the community, where church attendance can be well over 60%+ on a Sunday, we find that it is these states that lead the Western world when it comes to divorce, teen pregnancy, lone parenthood, violent crime and social extremes of rich and poor (not to mention a raft of other social ills). But these states make life difficult for the queers, so they must be doing God’s will. Religious conservatism is no guarantee of happy families – Ireland still manages over 50% weekly mass attendance, yet has well above average rates of lone-parents… It is a pity many conservative Christians have got better things to do with their time and than bleat on about SSM.
And as for this little gobbet of Carolinian wisdom –
If ‘gay marriage’ solves inequality, why does it then propose a version of marriage that still does not meet the standards of behaviour required by a straight couple. The answer is that cannot, because ‘gay marriage’ is in itself a legal fiction and impossible under natural law.
I think we have to ask: What were the grounds of your divorce… and the grounds for your annulment? Evidently your own first marriage, that produced a child, has, under the redefining of marriage that the Roman Catholic Church can arrogantly undertake – esp. for converts with a bit of a ‘past’ or parishioners with cash – I think you have more than a bit of cheek to even put this argument forward. Certainly your own previous marriage has vanished into the ether – a sweeping under the carpet that is itself a case of ‘legal fiction and impossible under natural law’. Grounds for annulment in theory are very strict – the reality is very different and perhaps you should remember this before sharing with us your own brand of nastiness and hypocrisy.
The perverse description of equality used in this article and Moore’s is not equality but the application of inequality. So I am surprised that people are taken in by these skeptical narratives and then assign them to equality when it is not equality but inequality that is being referred to. Take for example the corrupted notions of equality used in the picture. This perverse notion of equality maintains that each boy gets a box of equal size when the true goal is for each boy to be able to equally see the game. So in this case the application of true equality or Equality is that each boy can see the game. The application of false equality or equality is to give each boy the same sized box. This obviously produces inequal outcomes and so is not Equality but inequality. Obviously false equality is false justice in the same way that true equality is true justice.
The question that then arises is why are people purposely trying to supplant true equality with false equality and in the process denigrate the true meaning and purpose of Equality altogether. Is it to enable the elites and their cohorts a greater measure of control since the application of Equality points to equal outcomes and therefore wage Equality, housing Equality, health Equality and therefore a redustribution of wealth and resources to achieve that. Whereas the application of justice, although in itself important, does not demand as much moral accuracy and so enables/facilitates the status quo of inequality.
So don’t confuse Equality with what is actually inequality and remember that it is Equality that creates Liberty which in turn creates Fraternity. Inequality only creates Disadvantage and in turn Disharmony as the picture aptly demonstrates.