Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel

 

A Salutary Lesson from the Same-Sex ‘Marriage’ Bill

In the spectator of 14th June, 2013, Anne Applebaum, commented that she is often asked if her books on Stalinist Russia are a sort of metaphor for Obama’s USA.  She replies that it is not so and would only change her mind were the government’s opponents routinely arrested, beaten and imprisoned without trial, and were scoutmasters, newspaper editors and symphony conductors appointed only by permission of the State.

 

On a similar theme Peter Hitchens posted an interview of him by Nigel Farndale in which the latter noted:

 

‘But when I suggest that he [Hitchens,] sometimes exaggerates his case to win an argument, I am given a glimpse of his darker, more bullying side. He glowers at me and asks that I give him some examples. Well, I say, comparing the liberal revolution in Britain to the Cultural Revolution in China. It is just too extreme. Much as they might have secretly liked to, the Labour Party has never paraded right-wing professors wearing dunce’s hats. They have never committed human rights abuses or censored the right-wing press or imprisoned, exiled or executed dissidents.

 

‘Is it too extreme a comparison?’ Hitchens asks. ‘How old are you, 34? Well I am 47 and I grew up in a Britain that has completely disappeared today. That is to say my father was a British naval officer and then he worked in private schools, places where the country retained a lot of its pre-revolutionary characteristics. So I am older in experience than I am in years. I know an England that people in their sixties would have known. And it has changed utterly. And the revolutionaries have been quite vicious in the way that they have excluded those that haven’t agreed with them. They don’t kill, they don’t reduce to penury or chuck into cesspits, they just exclude. You don’t read Kierkegaard do you?’

Er…

‘No, neither do I. But he said the most effective revolutions are those that strip the essence but leave everything standing.’

Both Applebaum and Farndale have both missed the point made by their interlocutors. One suspects that Ms Applebaum’s questioners are quite well aware that there is no direct comparison between Stalinist Russia and Obama’s USA although, to paraphrase Malcolm Muggeridge, one might want to tell that to the occupants of certain residential accommodation in Guantanamo.  But these interlocutors are aware that they are living in revolutionary times.

And the oft-maligned Hitchens hit the nail on the head. The revolutionaries of our day want to effect a revolution by cultural means.  True right-wing (i.e. those who accept the Social Kingship of Christ or at least the natural law) politicians or political observers, public officials, newspaper columnists are not imprisoned (yet). They are excluded or subjected to a pervasive liberal environment in which they self-censor (with a few notable exceptions).

I recall, as a young trade unionist, being howled off a platform – having the microphone cut off – for daring to oppose the homosexual liberation movement in the mid Seventies. What was then merely a minor pressure group in society, but strong within elements of the trade union movement, is now arguably the most influential lobby in the world, and now having power at the highest level of government through its influence, and that of its proxy minions in our liberal establishment parties. Interventions such as the one I made then would be unthinkable today if one wished to continue to support one’s wife and family.  Such simple truths about the homosexual lifestyle would be considered as gross homophobia and evidence of one’s unsuitability to hold a public post.

 

And whereas Ms Applebaum’s observations concerned Obama’s USA she might well be forced to change her mind in the years to come (French pro-marriage protestors are currently routinely beaten and imprisoned by the French police).  There is an increasing intolerance by liberal establishments of what is described as homophobia but which, in essence, is none other than acceptance of the natural and moral law.  And while the criminal law has yet to be invoked to any great degree – employment and civil law is being used and will be used to enforce anti-homophobic policies upon society at large. We already have the examples of the Christian Bed and Breakfast proprietors penalised for refusing to accommodate same-sex couples in double rooms. We have witnessed years ago nine firefighters disciplined for failing to participate in a Gay Pride March in Glasgow, (1) and  it will only be a matter of time before teachers, clerics, lecturers, health workers, public officials will be sacked or demoted unless they actively participate in Gay Pride Activities to show proactively  that they are not homophobic.

 

In support of this we refer to the document ‘ LGBT Inclusion at Work: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Managers’, a resource from DOJ Pride, the Association of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Employees of the U.S. Department of Justice and Their Allies. Although this finds its origins in the US, its sentiments are already implicit in the equality and diversity policies being implemented across the UK.  This document suggests that managers, ‘Attend LGBT events sponsored by DOJ Pride and/or the Department, and invite (but don’t require) others to join you.’  Elsewhere the document makes it clear that Managers are expected to proactively promote the LGBT agenda when it states:  ‘Don’t judge or remain silent. Silence will be interpreted as disapproval.’ Managers are also exhorted to use terms in the workplace such as ‘partners’ rather than ‘gender-specific terms like “husband” and “wife”’. (2)  It doesn’t take much imagination to foresee  bullying, by the LGBT apparatchiks and their “straight” allies, being applied to those who are invited, but decline, to attend LGBT events, or who refuse to use the bastard term ‘partner’ to describe a true husband or wife and thus offend the sensitivities of ‘gays’ in the workplace.  The chilling term, ‘Silence will be interpreted as disapproval’ echoes the  accusation voiced against the character of St Thomas More in the film, A Man for All Seasons, who insisted, in his defence, on the legal precedent that “Qui tacet consentire videtur” (Silence breeds consent).  But, like the perjuring accusers of St Thomas, these modern Thomas Cromwells will not be satisfied until they can enter into the privacy of the human soul and conscience and force it to approve of their unnatural vice or exact a penalty – loss of, rank, job, pension or whatever. 

The Henry the Eighths of this world and the LGBT lobby are not content to indulge in sinful behaviour. They want us to admit that it is not a sin: that their behaviour is natural. They don’t want anyone to disturb their improperly formed consciences even through silent dissent.  They want to abuse our consciences.  They want us to lie to satisfy their erroneous consciences.  But as   Solzhenitsyn warned us in From Under the Rubble(3): ‘ DO NOT LIE! DO NOT TAKE PART IN THE LIE! DO NOT SUPPORT THE LIE!  … and then he explains ‘What does it mean, not to lie? It doesn’t mean going around preaching the truth at the top of your voice (perish the thought!). It doesn’t even mean muttering what you think in an undertone. It simply means: not saying what you don’t think, and that includes not whispering, not opening your mouth, not raising your hand, not casting your vote, not feigning a smile, not lending your presence, not standing up and not cheering.’ (4)

As the above DOJ document indicates, ‘not saying what you don’t think’ is not an option: it is tantamount to silence – a silence which the high priests of secular humanism will not tolerate no less than would Stalin, Henry VIII, or Herodius.

The nine Strathclyde firefighters were subsequently made to admit they were wrong in refusing to attend and provide fire leaflets at the Scotia Pride March (an event of the type at which Fireman are often treated as objects of an obscene ‘Gay’ desire,  and, if Catholic Firemen, are subjected to the grossly blasphemous and insulting antics of the ‘Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence’ and other anti-Catholic acts). These ‘guilty’ firemen were also sent on diversity training.  If this is not redolent of the Stalinist show trial and re-education camps then what is?

Colin Hart, campaign Director of the Coalition for Marriage, in an e-mail message headed, ‘Party Machines Push Through Bill’ bemoaned the fact that the Same-Sex Marriage Bill   was undemocratic from the start and at the end, ‘with the parties using their power to apply exceptional pressure on MPs and Peers. Whatever the parties may say, we know the votes on civil liberty protections were not truly free. There is a very good case for reasonable and necessary safeguards to protect the civil liberties of people like you – people that believe in traditional marriage. Several courageous Peers tabled good civil liberty amendments, which we supported. But the Bill’s backers – including the leaders of the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and Labour – saw to it that none of them were voted into the Bill’.  These protections were for teachers, workers, chaplains, free speech, and the right not to be subject to discriminatory action by Councils, for example, on the grounds that one or one’s organisation disagrees with same-sex marriage.

No doubt Mr Hart and his Coalition expected to be dealing with reasonable politicians those who would listen to reasonable pleas for toleration. Indeed the Scottish Bishops have made a similar plea for toleration to Scotland’s leaders in the absence of  protective legal safeguards in the Scottish same sex marriage bill.  The politicians, of course, save a miracle, will leave the lot of marriage supporters to the Equality Act and European equality directives etc. and will wash their hands when civil law and even the penal law is used to persecute those who wish to defend the traditional institution of marriage.  ‘We legislated in good faith’ they will say. But have they.

 

I think we are seeing Herbert Marcuse’s ‘Repressive Tolerance’ being deployed.       

Ralph de Toledano described it thus in his book Cry Havoc! (5):

‘“Repressive Tolerance” became the Ten Commandments of the repressive “academic speech codes” which it engendered. Marcuse argued in Orwellian newspeak that America’s supposedly neutral tolerance for ideas was in reality a highly selective tolerance that benefited only the prevailing attitudes of those who held wealth and power. Such “indiscriminate” tolerance, he argued, effectively served “the cause of oppression” and the “established machinery of discrimination”.  For Marcuse, as long as society was held captive by militarism and institutionalised pervasive social and economic inequality, “indiscriminate tolerance” necessarily would service the highly discrimininatory interests of regression.’ (6)

Just as Lenin considered that that which served the revolution was moral, Marcuse considered that ‘tolerance was moral and real only when harnessed to the cause of “liberation”’. (7)

 

As Toledano explains:

Marcuse’s aims included the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion [which includes, no doubt, opposition to same-sex marriage], or which opposes the extension of public services, social security, medical care etc.

 

For Marcuse “liberating” and “repressive tolerance,” unlike “indiscriminate tolerance,” would be “intolerance towards movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left no matter how repressive.” He turned thumbs down on “sacred liberalistic” principles of equality for the “other side.” “There are issues where there is no ‘other’ ‘side’.” (8)

 

The absolute and determined opposition of Comrades Cameron, Clegg,  Milliband and Salmond to include protection for pro-marriage supporters in the same-sex bills conform exactly to the Marcusian model of “liberating” and “repressive tolerance”.

 

Those who would still like to pretend that the British establishment parties are liberal or conservative or tolerant  must realise that these are revolutionary parties conforming to the Marcusian model of cultural revolution:  ‘One can rightfully speak of cultural revolution, since the protest is directed toward the whole cultural establishment, including the morality of existing society…There is one thing we can say with complete assurance. The traditional idea of revolution and the traditional strategy of revolution have ended. These ideas are old-fashioned…What we must undertake is a type of different and dispersed disintegration of the system.’ (9)

 

The destruction of the traditional family and the promotion of alternative ‘family’ types must be seen  not as some by-product of misguided government policies but rather as a deliberate policy directed against the morality of existing society and aimed at its disintegration; a policy which is supported by all establishment parties.  To lend these support is to take part in the lie.

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