Language and Identity

  The Death of Love

There is no doubt, and few could question the assertion, that love is an incredible thing. Placed in its true and proper context, love is a beautiful thing, if, indeed, it can be described as a ‘thing’.

Of course, love is not actually a thing. If it were a thing, we should possess it. If love is not a thing and we cannot own it, then exactly what is it? What is love? It is important that we ask ourselves the question today because we are entering into a new age in which the very word ‘love’ is claimed by different parties and groups only to mean very different things.

The word partly due to the power behind the word is being altered beyond recognition, given new constructions which previous generations have not considered. There are a couple of areas in which the word ‘love’ is being employed to advance a particular set of ideas or an agenda. Two areas in which it is being employed to advance an agenda are the areas in which naturally we as human beings have a great interest: namely these are sex and death.

For instance, it is said by some that the case for assisted suicide can be made because to allow the killing of a suffering individual is or could be, in certain circumstances, a loving act – an act of mercy or of charity.

Few other generations would have countenanced such an idea. Nor would these previous generations have countenanced ‘gay marriage’. There are some important factors as to why this should have been the case.  Let us examine some of them.

Until now, Christian societies respected that how we understand love should be guided by the Church and the teachings of Christ. The Church had a formidable role in defining the Divine and so, naturally, had authority in defining those qualities that find their source and origin in the Divine rather than, say, the media, Nick Clegg, popular opinion or the State.

Traditionally, love or how we define love – because it had been deemed to be a spiritual ‘thing’, was believed to be the remit of the Church.  In fact, outside of the Church, there was little other interpretation of love than the qualities attributed to it by St Paul.

We thought of love as patient, kind, humble, selfless and hopeful. We thought that love was not self-seeking or vain, that love did not seek its own happiness but that of others. Of course, love found expression through human interaction, but we had an understanding that our relationship with love was a struggle because while we may or may not have been men of cheerful or charitable dispositions, it was deemed that to love required an element of both virtue and personal heroism.  The commandment, that we should love the Lord our God with all our mind, heart, strength and understanding gave us a vision of love which was both concrete and spiritual. The commandment to ‘love our neighbour’ gave us a vision of love which was practical.

A man could love his country, but the cost to him might be that he loses limbs or life in defending it in time of war.  The greatest model held up to society of love was presented by the Church to the nation. That model, of course, was Jesus Christ who, in His love, gave up His life so that we might live – that we might have life in all its fullness.

There existed also an understanding that love did not come for free. Love wasn’t cheap or easy. There was a particular appreciation that love involved a measure of self-sacrifice – that love involved us in some measure or manner going beyond ourselves and our own self-interest. This was, in fact, the love that kept marriages together, that held families together like glue through good times and bad, through prosperous times and times of poverty, through sickness and health.

Coupled with this was a curious British reserve. We did not talk about sex much and, in fact, we were rather embarrassed by the whole thing and we resented the Italians, French and Spanish for being comfortable with it. This British reserve, however, also led to us Brits not using the word ‘love’ glibly or liberally. We heard that the French were great lovers, but we were right to think that in part that meant they slept around too much. To speak of love was to speak of something very serious, solemn and important. We didn’t bandy the word love around willy-nilly because actually, we were uncomfortable all round with expressing our feelings. Even feelings that had nothing to do with sex. Feelings and emotions, if they ran high, ran high behind a newspaper and a pipe.

There was, too, a natural mistrust of our own selves. We believed in Original Sin and so a man could not necessarily believe that just because he was committing adultery that what felt like love was actually love since love was also bound up with duty to one’s own spouse and the spouse of your ‘lover’ and if ever a politician were found to be sleeping with someone other than his wife, he resigned because confidence in his public reputation was lost. Even racy English novels that contained homosexual liaisons had these relationships to be fraught with guilt and sadness.

Now, the word ‘love’ is banded around in a way that is distinctly un-English.  What does, for instance, the Queen make of the idea that homosexuals share a ‘love’ that is ‘equal’ to that of a man and a woman who desire to start a family?  What we are witnessing is that in an atheistic, more secular age, groups and individuals have set out to rob words of their true meaning – or – certainly, their previous meanings, because in an age of uncertainty, of moral relativism, everything, even love itself, is ‘up for grabs’.

And so, when Nick Clegg says that ‘gay marriage’ will go ahead in order to recognise the ‘love’ of gay couples, few in society will pay his choice of word a second thought. We are now so used to public individuals, politicians and celebrities describing every relationship as being one of ‘love’ (even after the fifth marriage) that few would raise an eyebrow to Mr Clegg’s assurance to the British public that when the State changes the meaning of marriage, it is because of the ‘love’ that homosexuals share.  It follows therefore that this love simply must be raised to the official state of marriage (marriage must be redefined), for if it is not, then how can we call ourselves a free, equal, fair and tolerant society?

As I say, few will pour over Clegg’s words, but we really must, as citizens and as Catholics dig a little deeper underneath the soundbites of the Liberal Democrat politician, if we are to discern whether what he is actually saying is true.

For nevermind that the institution of marriage precedes both the Church and the State, it is surely not up to the State now to define the very meaning of the word, ‘love’, for, as I said, if a State does that, it runs the danger of robbing the word of its meaning or of emptying it of its original meaning to suit its own ends. For, ironically, what Clegg seeks to change in meaning, no State can actually do. No, the State cannot love.  Meditating upon and proclaiming love is, in fact, the Church’s territory and the State is treading on holy ground. If love, too, is to be redefined to mean active homosexual relationships then the State is, in fact, attempting to take possession of that which none can in fact possess, since the very idea of love is rooted in God Himself.

Our understanding of love, in fact, comes from Christianity. The love of spouses who marry and whose love brings forth children is Christian. The loving of and the education of these children is natural but hitherto Christian. To love our parents and to look after our elderly relatives is natural but, hitherto, also Christian. To love the poor and feed them is Christian. To love ones country and die for it is Christian and to love God and the Church and to die for both is Christian.

Nick Clegg’s comments deserve some comment and analysis because frankly, if the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is going to speak of love, indeed to preach, then he should grant his people right to reply. For if ‘love’ is what Mr Clegg says it is – namely, two men living a life together and giving each other sexual pleasure – then the very word ‘love’ has been demeaned. If that is ‘love’ then we must find a new word for what it means for a man to sacrifice his life and limbs for his country. If that is love, then we need to find a new word to express a man and a woman bringing forth new life into the world through their union and raising those children well.  If that is love, then we need to find a new word to describe that bond which exists between father and son, mother and daughter, brother and sister, Bishop and priest and, indeed, Queen and country.

To speak of the love that dare not speak its name as ‘love’ that in some way is equal to natural marriage or Christian marriage is to, at best, given a very superficial construction to the word itself, and, at worst, to rob it entirely of its profound meaning.  And, furthermore, when Government begins robbing words of their meaning to the point that even the word ‘love’ is no longer holy or sacred, then people should be concerned that the Government is entering into a realm in which it has absolutely no business whatsoever.

What theologians and mystics have dedicated their whole lives to penetrating – the mystery of love – has been solved by a Liberal Democrat called Nick Clegg.  Or has it?  Certainly, others, like St Paul, would perhaps disagree with Mr Clegg on his definition. Perhaps the most important of St Paul’s words on love is describing its purity. ‘Love is pure’ said St Paul.  If love is pure, as St Paul says, it suggests that it is not, in fact, a human construction at all – since few would maintain that we humans are ‘all pure’.  St Paul looks at love and sees in it its divine origin. He sees the Lover Himself, Christ Crucified shedding His Blood for mankind. When Nick Clegg looks at love, he sees two men sharing a life together and living out a sexual relationship. St John says, ‘Let us love one another since God is love’. Nick Clegg says, ‘Let’s have gay marriage because all loves are equal.’ What he has not done is tell us exactly why exactly active homosexual relationships constitute ‘love’ in the first place. It is also noteworthy that the British people are not being given a choice about same-sex marriage despite that an aspect of love is about allowing people choice. God loves us and because God loves us, God allows us to choose Him, or, indeed not.

See, what concerns me is that in the Church’s understanding, the very word love is rich with profound meaning. Love can drive men to a million different ways of giving themselves to God and their neighbour. Love has driven men to write incredible works for the love of souls. Love has driven people to live in the desert to pray to God without worldly distraction. Love has driven men and women to give up their sexuality as gift for God in religious life. Love has driven men to become missionaries and others to risk their lives in areas of the World in which the Church is openly persecuted. Love has driven couples to be open to children and to raise them in the love of God.

What concerns me most is that through the media the British population are being taught not to think. We are being taught not to probe beneath the surface level of what politicians and other public figures say. Mr Clegg just expects the nation, and seemingly the Royal Family, to accept his pontifications on love and not even to think about what he is actually saying. There is, of course, a word for such shallow and superficial comments on matters profound and wonderous by politicians. It is called ‘propaganda’.

Pope Benedict XVI, in his address to the German parliament recalled how the State can become a ‘band of robbers’. Today, we are talking about the spiritual robbery that is taking place in the 21^st century – the robbery of meaning from words to advance an explict agenda. Orwell called it doublespeak. Goebells said that as long as a lie is repeated often enough, it will eventually become believable.

Curiously, few in Britain even dare to question the new definition of love as being something that is guided by our groins, rather than by hearts that seek the good and the edification of others. Perhaps we are so steeped in our own sins, so lost in self-interest that we allow the lie to persist that sex = love and that everything we do, good or ill, is somehow begotten of love. For what is love to 21^st century man, woman and child today bares little resemblance to what love was to a man even of the previous two centuries. Stripped of its spiritual meaning, love is merely pleasure, merely a rollercoaster ride through life which has no focus other than our personal contentment. We have destroyed it. We have killed it and we allow others in power to continue to destroy it and to kill it on our behalf.

To 21^st century man, love is what we can extract out of others. When we have extracted all we can, like a bee gathering nectar from a flower, we move onto the next one. The best illustration of it is modern attitude to marriage and the family.  We can take it as read that the biggest reason for divorce in this country is that married couples fall out of love with each other or discover that they ‘no longer love one another’. In a previous age, if a man said to a woman, ‘I’m sorry, dear, but I no longer love you,’ the woman would likely say, ‘Well, I struggle to see then in what way you ever loved me.’ Another response could be, ‘What do you mean? Love is a choice.’

Love has been divorced from purity, constancy, loyalty, kindness, patience, longsuffering, selflessness, humility and chastity for so long that we are only lovers so long as we feel like it.  Few have paid it much attention, but before our eyes the love which was affixed, anchored to the seabed of Christianity has been cut loose from its moorings and now floats aimlessly out to a sea, a veritable ocean of moral relativism. Each man claims of the very tip of love, floating past him, ‘That is mine’, clasping at it as if it were his possession, while love itself, is no longer what it was because its mooring was in the sea bed, attached to a rock of Faith. Its very being, its very substance was in God. Love belongs to God. Yet the State is now laying claim to an arena which belongs to God and His Church, so that love means something different to what it meant to previous generations. This is robbery. Nothing more, nothing less, for, in the Christian understanding, love and lust are two entirely separate things. They are not to be conflated or mistaken for each other and it is certainly not up to the State to declare that lust is love. Still, we have, perhaps, only ourselves to blame.

‘God is dead,’ said Nietzche. ‘We have killed Him.’  It is no surprise that an age that delights in rejecting God, too strips the garments from love, strips it bare indeed. No surprise that an age that rejoices when God is banished from the public sphere, too crowns love with thorns, rather than a garland of beautiful flowers. No surprise that an age that abandons God, too abandons all previous understanding of love for something fashionable and easy. No surprise that an age that has no interest in the pierced Victim that loves all men and women, turns away, only to crucify ‘love’.

We understand that, as Christians, we may not always excel at loving. We all fall short of the Glory of God. At the heart of Christianity, however, is a definition of love which is beautiful, which is excellent and which transcends and even forgets self entirely.  It is holy. It floods the whole World with the Blood and the Water that gushed forth from the Heart of Christ upon the Cross. It is God.

Nick Clegg would be wise to steer clear, if he cannot appreciate this, not to lecture the public upon it, for he is a politician, not a preacher and his definition not only lacks substance. It lacks beauty and it lacks depth.  Nick can use whatever rhetorical flourishes he likes to justify that which can never be justified. That’s what politicians do. He should, however, leave expounding upon love to the Church because while love is not the possession of the Church, the Church's Founder, Father and Sanctifier is Love Itself.

Atheists may say, 'Well who is the Church to say it has the monopoly on love,' to which I would reply, 'Then you tell me, what, then, is love and who is the State to define it for us?' Let's stick with Johnny Cash's eloquent exegesis...

 Language, Identity and the New Lexicon of the State

Before I start this blogpost, I would just like to take this opportunity to tell you that I am a very important person. Does that sound a little haughty, a little un-English, a little immodest, a tad arrogant?

Well, it is none of those things to say that I am a very important person. In fact, every Catholic should acknowledge just what a terribly important person I am.

Why? Certainly not because of any merit of my own and most certainly not because I can sing and play the guitar at the same time (I didn't say well). No. In fact I am largely unemployed and prone to a degree of depression. But I am a very important person and I should like others to acknowledge it only because God clearly thought that I was such an important person that for me He became incarnate of the Virgin Mary and was made Man. For this reason, I know I am an important person and I should like even the State to acknowledge it.

You see. For me, did God assume flesh and blood. For me did the infinite and eternal God dwell on Earth for 33 years in an existence like ours for He was like us in all things save for sin. For me did He undergo a cruel and terrible rejection. For me did He carry the heavy Cross to Golgotha and for me did He die. For me did he destroy the power of Hell and open up the gates to Heaven. For me He rose on the third day and for me did He ascend to Heaven in His Risen and Glorious Body, so that I may follow after death to where He is now, with the Blessed Mother of God and all the Saints in the Blessed joy of Heaven. If, after God has done all that for me, you do not think I am a very important person, then I would say you are not a Catholic.

And if fame were to be something to be greatly desired then all the Faithful should rejoice sincerely for our names are not written across newspapers and magazines, but instead they are, we are told, 'written in Heaven' like the jet stream from red arrows flying across a hopefully blue London sky. Yes, the reality is that, to God, I am a very important person. Obviously, I'm not more important than anyone else, because all people are very important people in God's sight - Catholics and non-Catholics of every race, age, sexual orientation, ability and gender. In fact, not only are you and I so important that Jesus Christ should cross the threshold from Heaven to Earth and from Earth to Heaven, but you and I are so important that we are offered nothing less than union with God Himself, through Baptism and the Holy Eucharist. We are so important to God that He desires that even should we fall away from the love which unites we and He, then He Himself will forgive and renew us through Confession and make us worthy of Him. We are so important that God desires and wills to unite Himself to us and us to Himself. So important to Him are we that the same Jesus gives us His own Body and Blood so that we are given the power and the grace not to live as strangers or enemies of God, but as friends and disciples and lovers of God - not orphans as we perhaps once were - but adopted sons and daughters of the Triune God.

So, why would I say all this: for surely I am preaching to the converted? Surely every Catholic knows this and any potential atheist reader has stopped reading and gone elsewhere? Well, I say this because there is, as we know, a battle going on. It is not just a battle for our souls and the souls of our brothers and sisters inside the Church and outside of Her that we are used to. It is a battle for our very identity and it is becoming now a battle between the State and its allies on one side and, on the other, the Catholic Church and those with a measure of goodwill towards Her teaching in some matters, if not all - yes, even Protestants and, yes, even atheists. What is more, it is a battle which has been brewing for quite some time. So why is there a battle for our identity? Why should human identity be so important? Why should it become a battle ground or even a war?

Well, how we define ourselves, or how we allow others to define our selves pretty much defines and shapes how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us. In fact, it pretty much defines everything, even the laws that shape how we are governed. How we define ourselves and allow ourselves to be defined too defines whether we are free human beings or whether we will find that Orwell's vision of a society in which 'slavery is freedom' can morph into a terrifying reality. Orwell's dystopic vision is not of a society in which people are literally in chains working in gulags 24 hours a day while worshipping the State. The point is that the majority of people get and the State get along just fine. The State and most people are, in fact, in perfect harmony. The State, in fact, is more or less God to the people.

In every dystopic vison novel, the State plays a key role in ensuring that most people are contented for as long as people are necessary or productive. Of course, people needed persuading. People had to be convinced of the State's 'truths' in order to renounce their own liberty and give themselves to its service and for this Orwell cites the near constant stream of propaganda that the organs of the State spew forth onto its general populace - a populace which is near, if not totally, global. The message is that you are either in 'the Party' or you are not. If you are not, because you and the 'Party' are in disagreement, then for you, poor dear, the party is over. To enforce conventional State wisdom, Thought Police are required to counter subversive insurgency or bids for freedom of speech, thought and conscience. Entire 'Ministries' are established to oversee the dystopia with comic, if tragic, names, policies and outcomes and a key element in the victory of the State's propaganda machine is the new lexicon, which Orwell calls 'Newspeak'.

The overwhelming majority of the citizens presumably accept this new lexicon - this altering of words and changing of the meaning of words because they are repeated so often that even lies are accepted. Can we see this happening today? The answer is, as Obama fans often used to chant, 'Yes, we can!' Words and definitions are important since they are the method of delivery by which we understand concepts and ideas and the past 50 years has seen a staggeringly high number of alterations and redefinitions of words. And how very interesting it is that so many of the words and definitions which we used to use, over a period of time, came to either be changed or to mean something else or be reconstructed in ways which touch upon the definition, classification and reassignment of us - human beings.

Few plants, animals or invertebrae have been redefined, but we human beings and those issues that touch upon our very humanity and our perception of our humanity most definitely have. So just off the top of my head, here are a few examples: Unborn babies become fetuses. 'Gay' meant happy, joyful radiant, but now means homosexual. Illicit lovers or those living in sin were 'fornicators' but now they're 'partners'. Sodomy is 'gay love'. Drug addiction is 'substance misuse'. Abortion or 'termination' was once deemed to be child destruction in those less 'enlightened' times and both abortion and contraception are now aspects of 'family planning', 'reproductive freedom' or 'reproductive health', 'termination' and abortion after conception has failed can even become 'emergency contraception'. Even war and invasion is, with the UN, becoming a 'peace-keeping mission'. When the State invades a household and steals the children on grounds that can objectively be called dubious it is called 'removing children and placing them into "Care". Always, of course, it is 'in the best interest of the child'. I wonder, was 'sex education' ever called something else, like marriage preparation? A man who believes he is or wants to be a woman is 'trangender'. Who on earth first came up with the phrase 'mercy killing'? What is 'assisted dying' if it is not killing someone if with their consent? How could 'dignity' become associated with the very same idea?

In so many ways, I am sure you can think of more, words and definitions have been changed and, whether they sprang from any grassroots democratic movement originally, or not, the State has most certainly adopted all of these words and definitions that make up a new lexicon of human ideas because obviously it sees some great merit on advancing ideas about human beings and humanity which distort or cover up the previously, long-held  and established truth that they conveyed. I'm yet to be persuaded by any argument that posits that abortion is not murder, yet we are constantly bombarded by the idea that it is not because, fundamentally, the State and its allies simply refuse to recognise that a new human being in the womb could be attributed humanity. I'm yet to be persuaded by any argument that such a thing as 'gay or same sex marriage' could even exist because the word 'marriage' means the union of a man and a woman, members of the human race who are different, not the same. In order to argue for it, you have to change the meaning of the word itself which, personally, I think should not be allowed. I'd call the crime 'word destruction' but I'm not in any position of power. What the State says, apparently, is the way ahead - the great leap forward, indeed, and who am I, a backward simpleton who is yet to emerge from the 'dark ages' to understand the State's divine mandate to alter the meaning of words and cast their previous meanings into oblivion?

Except..except, I am a citizen, supposedly of the United Kingdom. I am a human being. First, before anything else I am a human being. I was a human being from the first moment of my conception in my mothers womb. I am just at a different stage of my 'being' than I was when I was 'being' in the womb. One day, by God's grace, I hope to be 'being' in Heaven united to God in the company of all the Holy Angels, the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the Saints because I am also a Catholic. My second 'birth' was at my Baptism at which I was born into a new relationship with God. I hope and pray to God that after my death, I do not suffer the 'second death'. It is possible, though, because despite the fact that I am a very important person to God, I can refuse His love and friendship by turning away from Him through sin. That is because I am a sinner, one who has refused His love in the past and who still falls into sin, on occasion mortal, more often venial, but there by the Grace of God go I, or indeed, not. It just so happens that I have a condition which is now known as 'same-sex attraction'. I freely admit that I am sometimes attracted to members of the same sex as myself. I do not claim to know why this is so. What I have, I freely profess, is an inclination which constitutes an objective moral disorder because I am drawn to be attracted to members of the same sex, in a sexual way, which the law of nature near universally entirely contradicts. Is this my fault? No. It is a fallen World and I accept that because it is a fallen World, I am wounded by Original Sin. Does such a condition mean I could never be a Saint? No, it does not, for the Church proclaims that I am called to embrace the Cross and be close to Jesus and Mary.

So, why am I saying all this? Why am I preaching to the converted? I say this because I recognise that the language used in the above passage is offensive to many in the United Kingdom. It is offensive to the irreligious. It is offensive to the 'gay community' (as if all 'gays' are in the same 'community' - if only they were then the Churches would truly be full of redeemed and truly gay Catholics of Brighton, Manchester and Soho). It is offensive to those who believe that in order to be a true participant and citizen in the United Kingdom, one must abide by certain rules of language. However, I am a citizen of the United Kingdom and until it is declared otherwise or I am silenced, I am free to use this language, whether people are offended or not. I have a right to express my opinion. It just so happens that my opinion is in line with Catholic teaching. That is freedom of speech. I am also exercising freedom of religion. My freedom of conscience urges me on. My freedom of thought gives me inspiration. I also say these things because under the sight of Heaven above, I am allowed to identify myself in accordance with my beliefs, even were my beliefs not to be religiously motivated. I do not begrudge anyone who chooses to identify themselves as 'gay' or 'lesbian'. I have, in my past, idenfitied myself as such. What I do begrudge is growing trend for the language which I have used to be deemed either 'intolerable' or 'intolerant' by the State and its allies.

My point is this: Who gave the State the power to define which of its citizens uses the 'correct' language in the new lexicon and which of its citizens uses the 'incorrect' language? The Church's language is 'intolerant'. The State's language is 'tolerant', aside from the fact that its language and its actions are intolerant of those with beliefs that contradict its new and mighty authority. The authority which is granted to the State is given to it by God. The Church has authority from Almighty God to teach. The State has authority to govern, not to 'reeducate' people and stamp out their 'outdated' beliefs. Only totalitarian regimes do that. Why, I ask you, does the State have the authority suddenly to redefine words, meanings of words, human institutions that pre-date it and call any opposition to its agenda 'bigoted' and 'intolerant', but as soon as any dissent is raised to its style of governance, those people's rights to freedom of expression are questioned and they are painted as gross malefactors? What makes the State's view of 'truth' more valid or credible than the Truth proclaimed by the Holy Church of God? The State's message is not more credible or valid, it is simply different to that of the Church and apparently more popular than that of the Church.  It has been made popular by years and years of media-channelled secular-atheist-liberal propaganda aimed at the lowest and basest aspects of our human nature. Yet, the power of that propaganda means that in just half a century we have experiened:

The redefinition of human persons - who is and who is not, the redefinition of marriage, the redefinition of child murder, the redefinition of war, the redefinition of the destruction of family life, the redefinition of human identity along purely sexual lines, the redefinition of unnatural sexual relations, even unions, the redefinition of sex outside of marriage, the redefinition of 'equality', of 'fairness' of 'tolerance', the redefinition of the killing of the vulnerable, weak and sick, the redefinition of even 'welfare', of 'planning to have a family/family planning' and, with the advent of IVF, the redefinition of human reproduction itself. Truly, this is a veritable brave new world and these redefinitions have altered, in the popular imagination, society's view of so much that touches on our humanity.

That nearly all of this is readily sanctioned and endorsed by the State is terrifying, not because the State has merely abandoned the God of Christianity, but because the only State that does all these things in the name of a new 'progressive' vision of mankind brought under its unyielding power is the State that believes that, far from being some kind of 'shadow' of God on Earth, it is, indeed God! A god that demands loyalty, obedience, fear and while it cannot yet elicit love, unquestioning approval and nearly totally passive, indifferent electorate. Now that so few men actually believe, 'being God is a dirty job, but hey, someone's got to do it'. Best leave it to the State, eh? Because with CCTV and modern technology, its becoming 'omnipresent' and fast. But first, all the opposition must be crushed since two infallible, mutually contradictory versions of the truth can never happily co-exist.

The Almighty God, because of all that He has done for me, gives me an identity which makes the State's and its notorious allies' official version look cheap, vulgar, insulting, patronising, dehumanising, demeaning, undignified and crass. I may be a man with same-sex attraction. I am certainly gay. I may be a sinner. But, I'm Laurence England and as things stand I am a free man. I am a child of God. I am raised to a dignity which no man can ever take away from me and who knows, maybe one day, I and others like me, we, yes we may be Saints, because those who stand against the tyranny of relativism and the creed of liberalism and the State that extols the virtues of both, may yet be honoured with a new and glorious title: the enemies of the State. Oh, what a wonderful time it is to be a Catholic in the United Kingdom, but, that said, it looks like Protestants and even some atheists should prepare for Room 101 as well. That should make for an interesting prison chat!

By the way, I see that the BBC report on Turkey and the Prime Minister's attack on abortion failed to mention his personal assessment of the practice as a tool of population control. The BBC report only mentions that he worries that the population is declining. Funny that. I wonder: Why would the BBC not report what he actually said? After all, the UN has never had any problem with encouraging 'population control' while simultaeneously advocating 'reproductive healthcare' for countries across the globe. Why are the BBC so coy about it?