Gay marriage is now legal in the United Kingdom. Marriage, as we once knew it, no longer exists in the law of the land. So, what comes now? Has Mr Cameron thrown down a lamp, bringing the shadows of a new dark age? The fact that this monstrous and unspeakable innovation was rushed in by a "Conservative" Prime Minister makes it even harder to comprehend, but then what difference does that make? The rival political parties are virtually indistinguishable. I don't actually vote because I am neither a political person nor do I have much faith in democratic polity. The Greeks were scornful of "mob rule" and were at the height of their sophistication under military dictatorships, as we were with the Empire. My mother thinks that voting ought to be mandatory, like paying council tax, because she naively believes that Members of Parliament actually represent their constituents. If my local MP (a Tory) stood up in Parliament and spoke in favour of gay marriage, is he representing my beliefs and convictions, established in faith and reason? No, he isn't. It is behoveful to remember that not all homosexuals are in favour of gay marriage, for a plethora of reasons. Dr Starkey, for example, is torn on the matter, considering marriage the quintessential badge of a heterosexual society in which homosexuals have no real part. Mr Crisp, I am sure, would also find the matter distasteful. For him the problem of homosexuality was that homosexual men's carnal lusts are insoluble, they bear no fruit, and so to ape an institution as old as marriage in this way would be...a profound waste of time. As for me, I stand by the Prayer Book definition of Marriage:
Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation, to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony; which is an honourable estate, instituted of God in the time of man's innocency, signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church; which holy estate Christ adorned and beautified with his presence, and first miracle that he wrought, in Cana of Galilee; and is commended of Saint Paul to be honourable among all men; and therefore is not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men's carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God; duly considering the causes for which Matrimony was ordained. Etc, etc.
Not that arguing for the sanctity of marriage from the point of view of religion gets you anyway to-day. I felt very despondent about all this on the train to work this morning. I feel as though I am standing at the quayside watching at a distance as a ship far out to sea founders in a great storm. The ship represents our national institutions and cultural traditions. The storm represents the senseless hysteria of the driven-by-their-bodies'-needs and whims masses (democracy). Like the dwarves in The Last Battle by C.S Lewis. Do you remember that all kindly remonstrance notwithstanding they still clung to their delusion, collectively? That, I'm confident to say, is democracy in action; it's just the art of making the hysteria of the drinking classes seem like matters of wise human choice.
Our society is now so jumpy about being politically-correct and being mindful of "human rights" violations that you cannot speak out about anything without being tarnished forever as prejudiced. You cannot speak out against gay marriage without being labelled homophobic; you cannot speak out against mass immigration without being labelled a racist; you cannot express any opinion contrary to the metropolitan elite of our time without being shot down in flames and then urinated upon by mobs of outraged riff raff. Only the other day, I discovered that even correcting the solecism of a young Slav woman could get the word "racist" dangled before me. Moral of that story? Oh, hell, I'll just play them at their own game. I'll just say that I don't believe in the existence of the moon and that I am being discriminated against because I am a black, one-legged transgender Mormon. The absolute worst thing you can be in Britain to-day is a Caucasian British male. God alone knows how terrible this country will be 20 years from now. As my father often says, "this country is finished."
2014 is the centenary year of the Great War. I wonder, had any of the young men of my generation 100 years ago, the generation of Tolkien and Mgr Knox, some vision of the years to come, whether any of them would have bothered being the pawns in what was really a dynastic feud between cousins. Would they really wish to have given their lives for the defence of gay marriage? Remember that on Armistice Day! O tempora! O mores!
It's the dictatorship of the masses, the belief that might is right. I have to deal with people every day at work who somehow think that if the majority of people hold a particular opinion then that has to be the truth. Even science alone tell us that is not the case, but then in their eyes I'm simply a relic, a fossil before my time. I do truly wish I had lived at least a hundred years ago. At least I wouldn't have to deal with the hoi-polloi making trite statements like "well, why don't you just go and get married too?".
ReplyDelete(By the way, parenthetically, I didn't realise that Christopher Tolkien divorced and remarried in 1967. I wonder what JRRT thought of that?)
Christopher Tolkien divorced his first wife in 1959 and married Baillie Klass, sixteen years his junior, in 1967. The senior Tolkien found Christopher's conversion to Anglicanism and subsequent divorce and remarriage hard to bear (you can read allusions to the matter in his letters) but families aren't perfect.
DeleteAh; thank you. I didn't know he converted to Anglicanism. It now makes more sense. But there is traffic both ways, even though some catholics would like to pretend the flow is one direction only.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I don't want to pain you, but I wondered if you might write a little about what you think on the subject of going to Church. I mean that quite generally, i.e. how does approach the hardline you-must-go-on-Sunday-and-every-other-day approach to fulfilling one's religious duty on the one hand, and more relaxed approaches on the other. It's something I had been thinking about, you see, as I am sometimes prevented by my work (which cannot be avoided, given that I work in the emergency services), or by illness or other suchlike, and I wondered what your take on it all was. (I like to read what you write, see.)
Well, I got divorced from my first wife and mother of our two children after 20 years of marriage (we were about ready to kill each other!) and two years later married my current wife (who had with her young son been abandoned by her husband years before). We have been happily married since 1989, and hope to be together until the end. Sometimes, as my priest said, God gives you second chances!
ReplyDeleteAlso, I do know gay couples both male and female, who have been together for many years into a ripe old age. As to their sex lives, that is none of my business.
At least they are not lonely single people pining away!
James Morgan
olympia WA
Ahh, you see I couldn't really say that I believe in any human relationships and cannot personally understand why people seek them out. But that's just me. My position on Marriage is backed solely by its antientry. I certainly don't wish to get married myself nor can I really understand how people could be happy in the state of marriage. It is something over my head, I'm afraid. But if you're happy, good for you.
DeleteI know a few very cordial same-sex couples too. No lesbians, I make a point of not allowing them into my life. Some homosexuals of my acquaintance are monstrous people though. One of them, a Roman Catholick, seems to think that he has an indult to live an homosexual lifestyle and completely disregard the teachings of his church. At least the rest of them were never members of the RC church or left at some point in their lives. It is the presence of so many homosexuals in the hierarchy of the RC church as much as the teaching that bothers me.
I'm afraid that the rot has gone all the way to King's College, Cambridge.
ReplyDeleteView it and weep:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ukDAfF0-8q8
Bad taste it is, though I did stifle a tiny snort.
Delete