This Troublesome, Ludicrous Priest

If Cardinal Keith O’Brien objects to being considered an intolerant bigot then he should perhaps cease making arguments that are a) intolerant and b) bigoted. Then again, he’s a member of the College of Cardinals and this is part of the price of membership*. His diatribe against gay marriage is an excellent example of this.

I suppose some people are exercised by the precise status of homosexual relationships but the Cardinal’s spittle-flecked prose still seems excessive, even by his church’s standards. It is doubtless a cheap observation to note that neither this Cardinal nor any of his colleagues wrote such furious opeds denouncing their church’s willingness to protect child abusers and other perverts. Cheap but no cheaper than the Cardinal’s own article. (Not least since the Cardinal asks that we consider the issue of gay marriage from the perspective of “the child”. Motes and beams and all that.)

Objecting to a so-called “tyranny of tolerance” (yes, really) O’Brien dismisses explicit protections offered to religious organisations as just another piece of “arrogance” on the part of the secular authorities.