Specifically, follow him around asking why he campaigns to lower the age of consent to 14, and is on record that "it is time society acknowledged the truth that not all sex involving children is unwanted, abusive and harmful".
Richard Dawkins might also be followed around and asked what formation in the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin was given either to Stalin or to Mao, just for a start, and how he knows that the human species did not descend from a single pair. Then again, despite the BBC's reporting of their childish scream for attention as Saturday's main event (though with the numbers couched in such terms as "up to"), are they really worth bothering with after the spectacular failure of their campaign against the Holy Father's visit?
Definitely worth bothering with, however, is the persistent use of the term "stem-cell research" to mean scientifically worthless but morally abhorrent playing about with embryonic stem cells, together with the viciously cruel justification of this by reference to an ever-longer list of medical conditions. The real stem-cell research involves adult and cord blood stem cells, is ethically unproblematic, and has already yielded real results, but struggles to secure funding because it is of no interest to those who cannot forgive the Catholic Church either for having educated them or, as in the case of Richard Dawkins, for having educated the wrong sort.
Have you noticed that they are claiming that the 20,000 they say (but the police don't) were at the Protest the Pope rally made it the biggest ever demo against the Pope?
ReplyDeleteAs if it was something to be proud of, that the most an anti-Pope protest could muster, even the biggest ever, was a fifth (at most) of the crowd up the road, acclaiming that same Pope.
They've been shown to be a tiny and irrelevant minority, and they don't like it.
It was like watching the auditions for Grumpy Old Men. The mercifully unsuccessful auditions, by humourless people.
ReplyDeleteBehind this was the National Secular Society, which has an impressive list of Honorary Associates, but which has an active membership of precisely two, and they are in a civil partnership. I am not exaggerating.