Tuesday 1 March 2011

Harmful

If the average person were to consider what qualities to look for in a prospective foster parent, they'd probably say; offering a stable, clean, loving home; having the patience and strength of character to nurture a child, especially one who may be difficult to handle; being reliable and experienced ...

But not if you're a High Court judge. If you're one of them, it's a case of:

"Never mind the welcoming home, never mind how many children you've raised and raised well. Forget all that, what we really want to know is; what do you think about sex? Can you be trusted to impart to your impressionable infant wards the correct opinions in matters sexual? Specifically matters homosexual?"

Thus by the High Court's latest ruling continues the state's struggle to impose its New Sexual Orthodoxy on dissenting Christians.

Not everyone disapproves:
"Stonewall today welcomed a High Court ruling in a case brought by a Derbyshire couple, who as foster parents believe that homosexuality is unacceptable. Stonewall Chief Executive Ben Summerskill said: ‘We’re delighted that the High Court’s landmark decision has favoured 21st-century decency above 19th-century prejudice. In any fostering case the interests of the 60,000 children in care should override the bias of any prospective parent."

‘Thankfully, Mr and Mrs Johns’s out-dated views aren’t just out of step with the majority of people in modern Britain but those of many Christians too. If you wish to be involved in the delivery of a public service, you should be prepared to provide it fairly to anyone.’
Firstly, Mr Summerskill provides me the opportunity to address something I've been meaning to address for a while: the word 'unacceptable'; how it is used to blur an area where distinction is most required: between thought, speech and action; between moral censure, social disapproval or criminal sanction. However, whenever you hear or read someone saying something is 'unacceptable' you can be sure they'll be jumping over moral censure and social disapproval and moving straight for the criminal sanction, or at least some kind of coercive legal restriction, as in the case above.

This is, you recall, a mere matter of opinion; that of the man and wife vis à vis teaching young children about the wholesomeness of homosexuality. Rather than being out-dated, or out-of-step, the majority of parents would take the same view on homosexuality, absent of any religious conviction, with regard to young children. Indeed few parents see it as their duty to actively promote the merits of gayness to their tender offspring.

Also note the term 'public service'. What is this public service, which they are made incapable of rendering by their recusant views? The couple in question most likely didn't see fostering as delivering a public service, but rather as helping particular, needy children, which no one denies they can do.

No. What we have here is a kind of loyalty oath, which the couple will not swear to, and without doing so, they are to be cut off from what Mr Summerskill calls 'public service', which probably encompasses pretty much everything.

As the Telegraph reports:
"Equality laws are supposed to uphold the rights to religious belief. Yet the High Court ruled that laws protecting people from discrimination because of their sexual orientation "should take precedence" over the right not to be discriminated against on religious grounds. Why has it been left to judges to decide whose rights trump those of others? "
Here we see the poison spring from whence many rivers run: a polluted concept of 'rights', based on nothing in particular, perhaps some kind of vague pantheistic impression, but no more than that. God has been dethroned. Natural law decried as nonsense. Our new rights-jockeys would squirm with spinsterish embarassment before admitting the providence of these rights of theirs. This alone does not damn them, but without the Rosetta Stone of property rights, properly understood, the rest of this rights rubbish is a mere jumbled stew of vested interests competing.

The real losers here are the abandoned children. Summerskill agrees; "the interests of the 60,000 children in care should override the bias of any prospective parent." Fine words, but he really means something quite different. Of paramount importance to him is ensuring that Christians like this couple be prohibited from fostering, and as for the children, let them eat cake.

10 comments:

James Higham said...

Here we see the poison spring from whence many malign rivers run: a mistaken concept of 'rights', based on nothing particular, perhaps some kind of vague pantheistic impression but no more than this.

Couldn't have put it better. The only reason I don't get into this big time is that it would make me too angry. We have enough to be angry about as it is.

alison said...

I guess in the end these new rights jockeys have as much business as any of the other pompous idiots throughout history deciding what constitutes rights for the rest of us. All born of the same motivation after all. Identity politics is just opportunism afforded its own slot in history. Its all a lot of romantic bullshit and always has been.

Trooper Thompson said...

James, you quote an earlier draft!

A,

"these new rights jockeys have as much business as any of the other pompous idiots throughout history deciding what constitutes rights for the rest of us."

We must dispute them as our ancestors did their ilk.

Guy Jean said...

"Public service". Well spotted! Yes, no doubt sometime soon, just "living" will be considered a "public service" and will then be subject to the relevant laws. Nice sleight of hand, there, innit? We are truly in a collective. Individualism is dead.

Guy Jean said...

The Tellygraph writer asks the right question, " Why has it been left to judges to decide whose rights trump those of others? "

Only about 30 years too late, but better late than never, spose.

Guy Jean said...

Y'all know this, no doubt, but it seems some basic education is way overdue.
1) "that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"
2) "Now that “right” means “entitlement” rather than “restriction on government,” there is no longer a word that means what “right” used to. An entire political economic concept and social attitude, wiped from the language without a trace." (A comment on mises.org
3) "legal immunity from interference by a higher political entity." (Gary North)

Furor Teutonicus said...

XX Stonewall Chief Executive Ben Summerskill XX

Now THAT surname could lead to some...."unfortunate" typing errors.

Trooper Thompson said...

Guy,

I take it you're a bit of a pessimist!

I wouldn't say individualism in any worse shape than it ever was, and it's rarely been a popular concept. I'd say the struggle goes on as ever before.

As to point 2, 'liberties' is often preferable to 'rights'.

alison said...

I don't identify much with our ancestors! They ran roughshod over some fantastic women at the time while they were busy deciding basic human rights. Life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and all that guff - for men only. So much for half of humankind's liberties eh! And the fact that Mary Wollstonecraft and others were totally instrumental in the discussions at the time, if not ahead of the curve in some (yes Mr Paine) and then blatantly ignored - well that just makes it all the more guff and nonsense to me. If they had bothered to ensure liberties were for women as well as men the door would never have been left open for opportunistic identity politics. It angers me that women had property rights under ancient Islam but not here in Britain. Absurd.

Trooper Thompson said...

Alison,

I just wrote a long comment, which has been lost somehow, and now I've got to go out. Suffice it to say, I think you're being too harsh on your ancestors, half of which are women.

You should blame those that denied the very concept of individual liberty and the inalienable property we all have in ourselves, not the radicals who struggled to establish the principle.

Once the principle was established, it followed that women had the same right and that slavery was fundamentally wrong.