Think Twice About 'SSM' Before It's Too Late

Many bloggers have picked up on Brendan O'Neil's excellent exploration of the 'same-sex marriage' proposal. His Telegraph blog version is here. His even better version for Spiked is here. Brendan is one of the few mainstream commentators who is able to see the legislation for what it really is - a huge power-grab by the State over an institution that does not belong to it - but to man and woman themselves.

We should all be quite clear that while it is true that David Cameron is 'out of his depth', that here we have not only a Conservative Prime Minister enacting 'equality' policies associated with the left, but a Conservative Prime Minister exercising an extraordinary over-reaching of State power. He's not just doing something that is popular on the left. He's doing something extraordinarily against the conservative tradition that he has inherited - the extension of the role of the State in human affairs.

As I was telling a friend of mine from University who was interested in what I had to say on the 'gay marriage debate' (he is in favour), we should enjoy our exchanging of views on the matter now, because once the legislation is passed, the 'debate' will, alas, be well and truly over.

Whatever people think about this issue, whether they are self-confessed 'liberals' or socially and institutionally 'conservative' all people should be concerned about this extension of State power, not just because of any parliamentary act itself 'extending' the rights of marriage to same-sex couples, but the very real dangers posed by 'marriage equality' that could haunt us afterwards.

Clever, clever: Will Self having a bright idea...

Here we have the Government not just re-defining a natural, human institution, but a State with a renewed sense of power that those with power will feel afterwards. Remember that there is no real public call for this proposal. It hasn't come from the populace itself. It is, politically and intellectually, the golden calf worshipped by a small elite minority who happen to have power and influence. If it passes in the House of Commons (and it almost certainly will) history will likely judge the vast majority of intellectual and political elites in the United Kingdom (Will Self springs to mind) as highly 'useful idiots' in a country left to deal with something worse than 'gay marriage' - that is - the new phase in the enforcement of the 'equality' agenda.

Obviously, it has been widely cited, but largely ignored by politicians, that the real nastiness about the legislation is not the danger to religious freedom in terms of 'gay marriages' in Churches. Nor even a future in which the Catholic Church loses its charitable status because it refuses to go along with 'marriage equality'. No, the weight of the new law will be felt mostly by those working in the public sphere in everyday life who don't agree with the new vision of marriage. It's important to remember this: They need not even be Catholics or Christians to feel uncomfortable enough to refuse, for instance, teaching this kind of stuff to school children, as inevitably they will be asked to do. They need not be Catholics or other Christians to feel uncomfortable about the destruction of their children's innocence in learning about the ins and outs of gay marital life.

It goes even deeper than that. For instance, someone like Will Self appreciates culture, books, art and theatre - perhaps opera and ballet too. Yet, aside from the kind of rubbish that dominates the bestselling books in the 21st century at Waterstones, Western civilisation has a deep treasury of literary works that run totally contrary to this new vision of marriage that would even suggest such an idea would be abhorred. Is it scaremongering to talk of book-burning in the future of literary works that do not go along with the new, tightly enforced State creed of 'equality'? I don't think it is.

'Call it Romeo and Julian or this play burns!'

For how long will the State at a local and central level put up with not just Bibles (so homophobic!), but also Shakespeare (not enough LGBT representation), Chaucer, Dante ("There's nothing funny about this 'Comedy!' Look what he thinks of homosexuals!") and pretty much the whole of the literary history of Western civilization. Will, in future, these great works, including, obviously, historical works like 'Butler's Lives of the Saints' be deemed grossly offensive to the enforcers of the Government's new equality religion and be sent to the crematorium?

It sounds absurd, but remember that the divisive nature of this debate on marriage and sexuality is not helpful to the Government nor those who are backing the agenda. It is clear that despite 'religious concessions' what is required in the equality is not diversity of opinion but uniformity of thought. We've already seen that diversity of thought on issues of 'equality' can lead to demotion, civil action or loss of employment and this law has not yet even arrived.

And its not just heterosexual marriage based literature which could endanger the minds of future British children, but literature in which the whole issue of homosexuality is considered something society reproaches or that is conducted in secret, or in which some kind of social taboo is broken. It is not extreme to suggest that we're heading towards a future in which ideas are dangerous - those found offline, in libraries and bookshops - as well as those found online, on the internet and blogs. In order to enforce 'marriage equality' and to educate, or rather 'reeducate' society in it, society - especially the next generation of children - will undergo some quite profound indoctrination on a scale that the Catholic Church could not achieve. Why? Because the Catholic Church does not teach any moral vision which contravenes natural law. And what will, in the wake of 'gay marriage' be made of those who, on their blogs and internet site, criticise the new era? Step forward, please, internet and press regulation.

As well as the concerning plans for internet and email spying included in the Draft (or is that 'Daft) Communications Bill and new plans for 'secret courts' readying themselves for a second reading in the Commons, along with the State redefining marriage, you could be forgiven for thinking you are living in a country gearing up for some quite serious totalitarian rule. I notice, for instance, that the Government have actually, in the Draft Communications Bill, actually given up pretending that this kind of thing is necessary to fight terrorists and that its quite clear the real enemy is domestic and that all are under suspicion of some dreadful thought or deed that could threaten the status quo.

While we're on the subject of internet regulation,  it is worth while noting that the UN is trying to organise something a little sinister with the internet, too, as if to serve to us a reminder that this redefinition of marriage is not a national issue, but international, as a rainbow flag envelops perhaps nearly 2/3 of the globe. China and Russia, no strangers to totalitarian power, have shown absolutely no interest in this 'gay marriage' propaganda whatsoever. I guess that China already has its one-child policy so has no need for it and Russia is trying to promote childbirth because it recognises that its own demographic winter is in full swing.

Perhaps I'm rambling and discovering tangents, but what I'm trying to suggest is that aside from the host of secondary effects already discussed about this legislation, this goes much deeper than just religious conscience, the ECHR, employment and controversial 'gay weddings' in churches being sought by gay couples from men of the cloth.

This goes deeper and to the heart of how people think about life, love and marriage and how children will be taught - a new State decreed and State enforced morality which has the potential not just, in years to come, to deem historical books and literature as odes to more traditional days when people were less enlightened, but a threat to the new (for it is new), world (for it is global) order (for it will be an established order - an epoch severed nearly entirely from its roots).

Everything that contradicts the equality-generated precepts and which precede this new, world, order will, most likely, be viewed as dangerous and a threat to the existing order of that day, to the extent that history itself may need to be rewritten in order for future generations to believe the new State creed. In order to educate a new generation in a new, untried, untested social and moral formation which contradicts natural law, the only way it can be successfully achieved is for dangerous ideas and perhaps dangerous people to be 'disappeared' or 'removed' in some way, because a harmonious society might just depend upon it.

...but not opinion.

Time and time again, 'equality' has been shown not to be a mantra that respects the individual, but an idea that crushes individual dissent, often motivated by conscience or simply free-thought. In this new epoch, this trend is only likely to increase. Rights as we traditionally understood them, such as parental rights, religious rights, freedom of thought and conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of language, freedom perhaps of association and even the right to family life are under threat from this proposal.

This is why those campaigning against it are dubious even of the justifications for it that come from our political, media and intellectual elite. Useful idiots, indeed! Everything suggests that under a new State creed of 'equality', diversity is the last thing that will be the outcome. There is a new orthodoxy and the 'old' mode of thought is no longer welcome. Few commentators in the mainstream media are prepared to say it and perhaps fewer have even thought of the hideous potential for this proposal. Either these people are not so clever after all, or they are so in love with 'equality' that they are blind to its obvious internal logic that leads to political, cultural and social tyranny. Perhaps some supporters of 'gay marriage' in the United Kingdom believe that once 'same-sex marriage' arrives dramatic upheavals in re-ordering society to 'equalise' it, will cease. I really doubt that this is the case.

As Orwell said, "He who controls the past, controls the future. He who controls the present, controls the past."