Calgary Bishop Frederick Henry is reportedly in rewrites on his now-infamous pastoral letter.
And no wonder. There are countless candidates for the title of most offensive passage. Take the two paragraphs (please) that much of the media has latched onto:
Since homosexuality, adultery, prostitution and pornography undermine the foundations of the family, the basis of society, then the State must use its coercive power to proscribe or curtail them in the interests of the common good.
It is sometimes argued that what we do in the privacy of our home is nobody’ s business. While the privacy of the home is undoubtedly sacred, it is not absolute. Furthermore, an evil act remains an evil act whether it is performed in public or in private.
Those are some truly appalling ideas for those of us who don’t see the Enlightenment as Western civilization’s missed left turn at Albuquerque. Some two generations after the state was evicted from your bedroom, Bishop Henry apparently wants back in, and he’s bringing a little “coercive power” with him.
But if you want a quick tour of sheer paranoid Secret Homosexual Agenda territory, you can’t beat this one:
Contrary to what is normally alleged, the primary goals in seeking legalization of same-sex ‚Äúmarriage‚Äù are not the financial or health or inheritance or pension benefits associated with marriage. The search for stability and exclusivity in a homosexual relationship is not the driving force. The principal objective in seeking same-sex “marriage” is not really even about equality rights. The goal is to acquire a powerful psychological weapon to change society‚Äôs rejection of homosexual activity and lifestyle into gradual, even if reluctant, acceptance.
(An aside: Why do I picture the “bishop” constantly “setting down” his “pen” to do “air quotes” whenever he wrote the word “marriage”?)
Then there’s the following:
We find ourselves sharing basic common ground with the majority of Canadians who understand marriage to be the union of a man and a woman, faithful in love and open to the gift of life.
May not want to hang your mitre on that one, Bishop. Because a January 13 poll by Environics says, actually, most Canadians are in favour of allowing same-sex marriage… by an 11-point margin, in fact.
What’s more, time is not on the Bishop’s side. Opposition is focused among those 60 years of age and older; the younger the person polled, the greater the chance they support equality. Among twentysomethings, the gap is more than two to one.
It’s this last fact that gives me hope. This is a battle where the good guys are winning — much too slowly, and much too painfully, but winning nonetheless.
But it infuriates me that so many of my friends have to wait for that victory to happen — that they have to wait until the Bishop Henrys of this country are consigned to the irrelevance that history has fated for them.
And it infuriates me that this is the line in the sand that too many choose to draw. Not poverty, not children growing up without decent child care, not the elderly living out their last days without the dignity that home care could provide, not pollution and the destruction of wilderness, not torture, not war. Those, apparently, are all negotiable. But the one thing that will apparently send Canadian society spiraling to catastrophe is if two women who love each other, or two women who love each other, are allowed to marry.
