A Salutary Lesson from the Same-Sex ‘Marriage’ Bill
by AnthonyFraser
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.
NOTES
NOTES
(2)
Although were they to ape the Orwellian Newspeak consequences of UK
same-sex marriage laws, neither of these terms could possibly be
regarded as offensive as in one particular piece of legislation ‘
“husband” here will include a man or a woman in a same sex marriage, as
well as a man married to a woman. In a similar way, “wife” will include
a woman married to another woman or
a man married to a man. The result is that this section is to be construed as including
both male and female same sex marriage.’
(3) Collins and Harvill Press, London 1975. pp. 274 & 276.
(4) Ibid. p.
(5) Cry Havoc! – The Great American Bring-down and How it happened. Published in 2006 by Anthem Books, Suite 1010, 500 Twenty-third Street N.W., Washington D.C. 20037,
(6) Ibid., pp. 151-152.
(7) Ibid., p. 152.
(8) Ibid.
(9) Ibid., p. 152-153.
1 comment:
Saint John the Baptist might disagree with Mr. Solzhenitsyn. Or maybe I am misunderstanding him. Silence in the face of evil is to agree with it. Surely I am misunderstanding? Someone please explain further.
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