Beware the Taleban of tolerance

07 February 2007

The temper of the debate on gay adoption and the Catholic Church has been astonishing. I have never seen such a concentrated display of anti-Catholic venom as I did from Westminster and what used to be called Fleet Street. Read the articles on the subject published in the Independent on Sunday recently and judge for yourself. In place of reasoned critique are vicious and personal attacks on Catholicism. If you were to substitute the word ‘Jew’ or ‘Muslim’ for ‘Catholic’, the police would already be making incitement-to-religious-hatred inquiries.

Nick Robinson of the BBC pointed out that it was stated repeatedly, as if fact, that Tony Blair was acting under orders from his Catholic wife. And almost every time Ruth Kelly was mentioned, she was referred to as ‘Ruth Kelly, a Roman Catholic’, or ‘Ruth Kelly, a member of the secretive Roman Catholic Opus Dei sect’, even by the BBC. Fair comment, yes, as both facts are certainly relevant. However, the three MPs leading the opposition to any opt-out for the Church all campaign on gay issues, and one is an office-holder in the National Secular Society.

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