Senior Catholic Attacks Governent's Gay Marriage Plan

The most senior Catholic in the UK has called the government’s plans for gay marriage a "grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right".

Cardinal Keith O’Brien has accused the coalition of trying to “redefine reality”.

"Since all the legal rights of marriage are already available to homosexual couples,” he said. "It is clear that this proposal is not about rights, but rather is an attempt to redefine marriage for the whole of society at the behest of a small minority of activists."

A spokesperson for the Home Office said the government believed that "if a couple love each other" and want to commit to a life together they should "have the option of a civil marriage irrespective of their sexual orientation".

In a number of controversial remarks the Cardinal said that with the legalisation of same sex marriage, “further aberrations would take place and society would be degenerating even further than it already has into immorality.”

Likening gay marriage to slavery he said: “Imagine for a moment that the Government had decided to legalise slavery but assured us that ‘no one will be forced to keep a slave’.

“Would such worthless assurances calm our fury? Would they justify dismantling a fundamental human right? Or would they simply amount to weasel words masking a great wrong?”

Responding to accusations of using inflammatory language he went on to say, “I don’t think it’s inflammatory at all. I think it’s handing on the teaching of the Christian Church for more than 2,000 years and I am doing my best to hand it on in a way than many people can hear it.”

Labour’s deputy leader, Harriet Harman, expressed fear that the Cardinal’s words could be "fuelling or legitimising prejudice".

"We have had prejudice, discrimination and homophobia for hundreds of years.” She said, “That doesn't make it right."

"I don't want anybody to feel that this is a licence for whipping up prejudice."

(H/GK)