So, That That, Then?

Several Catholic adoption agencies will be closed down in the next few weeks, thanks to Tony Blair's Sexual Orientation Regulations, supported by David Cameron.

Twenty-five per cent of adoptors in this country are Catholic, and that is the problem. It is not only perfectly reasonable to surmise, but in fact impossible for any reasonable person to fail to realise, that the destruction of those agencies is the whole point of this legislation.

This is not about homosexuality, but about marriage, and about the view that children are best brought up by a married couple, which, as much in point of legal fact as anything else, the parties to a civil partnership are not. (Yes, I was brought up from the age of 13 by a widowed mother. But that is wholly different from contriving such a situation, never mind a situation in which a paternal, or indeed a maternal, influence has been altogether excluded.) This view is no doubt held by a sizeable proportion of the population, and has long been one of the extensive list of popular views to hold which is to be disenfranchised.

Those behind this legislation hate the Catholic Church, with Her concentration in Scotland, the North, the Midlands, and the working-class parts of London; with Her unyielding, wholly coherent view encompassing bioethics, sexual morality, social justice, environmental responsibility, and world peace; and with Her large following among middle-class people with working-class family backgrounds, a post-War phenomenon the very existence of which is in no small measure due to the Catholic school system, the only reason why those who hate "faith schools" do so.