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Rowan Williams, Chris Grayling, homophobia and synthetic outrage
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk ^ | April 4th, 2010 | By Daniel Hannan

Posted on 04/05/2010 12:20:59 PM PDT by Maelstorm

When someone claims to have been “offended” by someone else’s remarks, he is usually grandstanding. Believe me: I’ve been on the receiving end of synthetic outrage more often than most. It’s one of the reasons I feel a certain kinship with Rowan Williams.

...

It’s a similar story with the fabricated row about Chris Grayling’s belief that religious B&B owners should not be forced by law to let rooms to gay couples. Such hoteliers are guilty of bad business as well as bad manners: they are harming their profits for no good reason. But you don’t have to be anti-gay to believe that people should be free to dispose as they wish of their own property.

To pretend that Chris’s remarks make him a bigot is ridiculous. Such a pretence is, however, vital to the synthetic outrage demanded on these occasions. The Observer, which splashed with the story, began its report with the overblown cliché that we expect and enjoy: “The Tories were embroiled in a furious row over lesbian and gay rights last night…”

It went on to complain that “Tory MEPs refused to support a motion that condemned a new homophobic law in Lithuania”. Oh dear. The writer, Toby Helm, is a decent sort. He used to write for the Telegraph (his copy was far less Left-wing in those days), and he knows perfectly well that Conservative MEPs never vote to interfere in the domestic affairs of another member state. I made a speech during that debate, which you can watch here. I defy anyone to infer from it that I, or any Conservative, was motivated by anything other than principled Euro-scepticism.

Perhaps this sort of reporting will become rarer once polling day is out of the way; but I’m not holding my breath.

(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.telegraph.co.uk ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: coe; europeanchristians; gay; homosexualagenda; mock; outrage; religiousleft; rowanwilliams
We are facing two types of tyranny, the tyranny of economic confiscation of wealth/property and a more insidious personal one the one that wishes to control our very minds and consciences. When someone says they don't care about "social issues" they are just as dangerous or even more so than someone who would raise your taxes because they would just as quickly tax your very soul for your beliefs and personal judgments as long as their pocketbooks were fat.
1 posted on 04/05/2010 12:20:59 PM PDT by Maelstorm
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To: Maelstorm

“Such hoteliers are guilty of bad business as well as bad manners: they are harming their profits for no good reason”

I don’t know, it’s probably hard to get regular or repeat business from straight couples, families, and/or anybody treated to extreme homosexual behavior at a B&B.


2 posted on 04/05/2010 12:45:47 PM PDT by Persevero (Ask yourself: "What does the Left want me to do?" Then go do the opposite.)
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To: Maelstorm

Right. That’s why I can’t go with Libertarians. They profess to leave social issues such as gay marriage to the private sector without accounting for the vast body of civil law that assumes marriage to be an essentially procreative institution. By failing to recognize that long-standing, rational, biologically based assumption, many irrational and harmful consequences follow, such as the state-coerced assaults on conscience cited in the main article of this thread, under a pretext of “equal protection.”

But the worst losers of this departure from hormonal reality are the children. The Netherlands provides an example of what happens when the state leaves the definition of marriage to the whims of arbitrary societal factions rather than rooting it in the biology and psychology of creating new children. In the Netherlands, marriage is becoming an artifact of the past. New children are more and more the product of random relationships and increasingly dropped on the doorstep of the state, to be raised as good little statists themselves, winding the cycle of state dependency ever deeper into the collective psyche of the culture.

If I were to vote as Libertarians do on this issue, I would think myself a worker of cruelty to future generations of children, lost boys and girls, with no clear path back to the blessings of natural family life and their own, biologically grounded sexual identity.


3 posted on 04/05/2010 1:00:23 PM PDT by Springfield Reformer (Winston Churchill: No Peace Till Victory!)
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To: Springfield Reformer

Life is becoming so horrible for children all over the world, even in the most ‘developed’ countries. It has gotten to the point where there is no longer any possibility that civilization as we know it will progress and improve. It can only continue to regress until humanity goes extinct.

You would have to be a complete fool to bring a new life into this world.


4 posted on 04/05/2010 1:25:24 PM PDT by Soothesayer (The United States of America Rest in Peace November 4 2008)
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To: Soothesayer

That’s exactly what the prince of lies wants you to do - despair and not bring forth new lives made in God’s image.

Jeremiah 29:
4“The LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those people whom he allowed Nebuchadnezzar to take away as prisoners from Jerusalem to Babylonia:
5‘Build houses and settle down. Plant gardens and eat what you grow in them.
6Marry and have children. Then let your children get married, so that they also may have children. You must increase in numbers and not decrease.

And, remember, things will get worse before they get better,
and we’ve read the end of the book - we win.


5 posted on 04/05/2010 1:32:04 PM PDT by MrB (The difference between a humanist and a Satanist is that the latter knows who he's working for.)
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To: Springfield Reformer

There isn’t just one flavor of libertarian. Under that rather broad umbrella, for example, are people who are very fervently pro-life and others pro-”choice.” Similar divisions occur on other hot button issues.


6 posted on 04/05/2010 1:37:25 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (I am in America but not of America (per bible: am in the world but not of it))
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To: Maelstorm

With Hillary I learned the term “feigned anger” and now I’ve learned “Syntetic outrage”


7 posted on 04/05/2010 2:10:47 PM PDT by FreeManWhoCan (I like dogs better than I like most people.)
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To: HiTech RedNeck

I recognize the Libertarian divide over the abortion issue, but they are rather more uniformly in favor of gay marriage.

However, even on abortion, the legal philosophy I have heard them express is substantially different than what comes from a traditional moral conservative such as Reagan. The right to life is poorly defended by most Libertarians I have heard, because it is so politically expedient for them to disassociate morality from law, as if having moral beliefs taints one’s approach to the law.

Politically, this works for them for gay marriage because they can argue there are no harmful consequences (more easily achieved by ignoring Netherlands Child Abandonment Syndrome). It works less well for abortion because the killing of innocent humans, in addition to having a clear victim, is a profoundly moral issue that is also deeply woven into the fabric of our law and its history. You really cannot disassociate morality from murder, though some have tried.

This artificial dichotomy puts them in an awkward place where, in thinking through novel legal situations, they really have a harder time making rational connections between moral theory and legal theory, as if the two modes of thought occupied separate universes. They don’t.

Bottom line? The majority of Libertarians will more often than not end up with morally and legally confused notions of whether and how to protect the unborn. Their legislative compass is broken. Therefore, more babies will die under their policies than under the policy of an old fashioned Reagan moral conservative, which is simply life for all the innocent children, without apology for being both morally and legally right on the issue.


8 posted on 04/05/2010 2:38:47 PM PDT by Springfield Reformer (Winston Churchill: No Peace Till Victory!)
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To: Springfield Reformer

I can go with some Libertarians but when they start talking about social issues as if all things are equal then I break ranks. Homosexuality, legal sex workers, and prostitutes all have something in common and that is a higher than average incidence of sexual and physical abuse in their past. It also is fairly well accepted science that those who are abused are more likely to become abusers. Also it is clear that heterosexuality is the natural alignment for successful organisms to pretend otherwise is not about liberty it is about cowardice. Sexual liberalism has fueled tyranny. More unwed births, more sexually confused, more sexual abuse, more violence, more divorce, more lost kids largely incapable of growing up to form stable normal self sufficient families and at huge costs to society in freedom and liberty because it is the results of irresponsible behavior that has been the justification of the huge growth of government.

Now we are increasingly threatened by the idea of thought crimes which I find even more odious than the outrageous tax policy because what they wish to take is your ability to think for yourself and speak your mind freely. This is the tyranny that enslaves men’s minds the other is the tyranny that enslaves their wallets.


9 posted on 04/05/2010 3:12:48 PM PDT by Maelstorm (Confiscation of wealth with out explicit consent is not charity.)
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To: Maelstorm

I guess I’m a homophobe because I’m utterly disgusted by gays.Fine by me!


10 posted on 04/05/2010 6:29:50 PM PDT by POWERSBOOTHEFAN (Blessed Be The Name Of The Lord,For His Name Alone Is Exaulted)
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To: Maelstorm

Very well stated. Thanks for the feedback.


11 posted on 04/05/2010 8:27:03 PM PDT by Springfield Reformer (Winston Churchill: No Peace Till Victory!)
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To: Maelstorm

“Sexual liberalism has fueled tyranny.”
Exactly. People who will not exercise self-control are excellent targets for government control. As Edmund Burke stated,”their passions forge their fetters”.


12 posted on 04/05/2010 10:56:14 PM PDT by liberalism is suicide (Communism,fascism-no matter how you slice socialism, its still baloney)
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