Tuesday, 6 March 2012

Culture wars continued

When a person goes on and on and on about the evils of this or that we often say, "He protests too much". Reading the words of Cardinal O'Brien and listening to him on the Today programme yesterday is to witness  a man flailing about, lost, shouting for a world that has changed. From where do his images come? Words like grotesque and comparing same sex marriage to slavery seem to emanate from a paranoid internal world that is in turmoil. 

Monitoring my own reactions to the gay marriage question makes me aware of a shift in my own thinking. A few weeks ago I was indifferent, feeling that I do not want to ape heterosexual patterns and as long as civil partnerships provide the same benefits as marriage then that was fine. However, the homonegativity that the gay marriage question has evoked from some religious leaders has pushed me into taking a line that supports same sex marriage for those who want it. Neither my civil partner nor I do want it but want other gay and lesbian people to be able to get married if that is what they want.

The words of Cardinal O'Brien have done much to galvanise support for gay marriage. Ironical, or what? Well done. 




1 comment:

  1. It is great to see the gradual reclaiming of the unconscious from the dogma and rituals created by the disciples of Freud.

    I like Gilchrist's book very much and it would be wonderful if it were true. However the current state of knowledge of brain function means that there is an enormous amount of speculation. He asks us to make a leap of faith and he lives in the same hemisphere as Bartlett.

    The prescience of Dr Who and other intelligent science fictions is seriously underrated. The Silence and the Weeping Angels are superb metaphors for our attempts to genrerate an objective understanding of brain/mind processes using the subjective and illusive tools available to our conscious mind.

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