Sexual-orientation regulations threaten religious freedom, Scottish cardinal warns MPs
Jun 15, 2006
Government proposals designed to outlaw sexual-orientation discrimination constitute grave threats to “freedom of conscience” and to “religious freedom,” a Scottish cardinal told Catholic legislators in a homily delivered in the seat of United Kingdom political power.
LONDON (Catholic Online, 6/14/2006) – Cardinal Keith O'Brien of St Andrews and Edinburgh at a June 14, 2006, Mass in St. Mary’s Undercroft of the Houses of Parliament in Westminster here, said proposed regulations could undermine official church teaching and require Catholics to act against their religious convictions.
The proposals “seek to force people of faith to approve and cooperate with values that they can never in conscience accept,” he said. “Faced with such threats, the Church must speak out not just for its own freedoms but the freedoms of all.”
The cardinal was in London for three days – June 13-15 – of meetings with members of the House of Lords and House of Commons and government officials, including the Prime Minister Tony Blair, and to attend the service of thanksgiving marking the 80th birthday of Queen Elizabeth.
The Equality Act 2006 allows the government to prohibit discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation in the provision of goods and services in the same way as it is illegal to do so on the basis of race or gender. The regulations, which are to take effect in October 2006, are designed to protect gays and lesbians from being denied "goods, facilities and services" on the basis of their sexual preferences.
The proposed regulations have recently been the subject of a Department of Trade and Industry consultation, which closed on June 5, 2006, and to which the Catholic Bishops of Scotland responded.
In their response, the bishops argued: "A fundamental principle that has to underpin any proposals for regulation is that the freedom of conscience of individuals must be respected. It is not licit to force an individual to act contrary to his moral belief. It is a well-established and reasonable moral position to regard homosexual acts and the promotion of the moral equivalence of heterosexual and homosexual relationships as wrong."
Cardinal O’Brien said the government “overreached” its authority and will be guilty of trampling “legitimate moral freedoms and when it imposes values, which are without rational and sociological merit.”
Citing the example of St. Thomas More to the Catholic peers and MPs, the cardinal said that "the right to adhere to one’s beliefs is beyond the powers of earthly sovereigns and human governments."
He warned the legislators that they face pressure to “compromise on principles” from society’s “growing secularism and relativism.”
“There is a danger that moral relativism is seen as the neutral belief system, which can be allied with democracy for the service of all. Moral relativism is not neutral, nor can it lead to the common good. Without recognition of moral truth, democracy will be self-defeating; it will turn into an instrument of oppression, which will pit the strong against the weak,” he said.
"Democracy,” Cardinal O’Brien said, “which separates itself from truth, taking the path of moral relativism, can soon become thinly veiled totalitarianism."
He stressed that laws “must always respect the dignity of the human person and each person’s integrity of conscience, whether that is a conscience formed by Christian principles or any other belief system.”
“Conscience,” he added, “is formed by truth not by force.”
Sexual-orientation regulations threaten religious freedom, Scottish cardinal warns MPs