England Versus Britain: Liberal Christianity Versus Fundamentalist Liberalism

I’ve followed the reaction to the Archbishop of York John Sentamu’s recent sermon on Englishness with great interest. On the whole, the response from the English-nationalist community has been highly positive. This is understandable, as Sentamu’s words add up to a celebration of Englishness, which – he argued – should in fact be formally celebrated by making St. George’s Day a national holiday:

“Let us recognise collectively the enormous treasure that sits in our cultural and spiritual vaults. Let’s draw upon the riches of our heritage and find a sense of purpose for those who are thrashing around for meaning and settling for second best. Let us not forego our appreciation of an English identity for fear of upset or offence to those who claim such an identity has no place in a multi-cultural society. Englishness is not diminished by newcomers who each bring with them a new strand to England’s fabric, rather Englishness is emboldened to grow anew. The truth is that an all embracing England, confident and hopeful in its own identity, is something to celebrate. Let us acknowledge and enjoy what we are.”

This makes such a refreshing change from the continuous diet of Britishness that we are incessantly fed by the politicians and the media that Sentamu’s speech is itself something one feels like celebrating. As he himself says, “Englishness is back on the agenda”. Amen to that!

In view of this, it feels somewhat churlish on my part to point out that the Archbishop himself appears at times to have a weak grasp of the distinction between Englishness (and England) and Britishness (and Britain). This is a point I made in a comment to a posting on Sentamu’s sermon in the Cranmer blog, which I reproduce here:

“Archbishop Sentamu does appear to be confused about the distinction between England / Englishness and Britain / Britishness, slipping seamlessly between one and the other in this sermon. For instance, at the very start of his disquisition on the ‘realities of Englishness’, under the heading ‘England’s Debt to Christianity’, the Archbishop writes: ‘Historically, Christianity has been at the heart of the history of this nation. British history, customs and ethos have been gradually shaped by the Christian faith’. Which is it, Archbishop: England or Britain? And which is ‘the nation’?

“And again, under the heading ‘A Loss of Vision’, Sentamu writes: ‘a more serious development over the past century has been a loss of vision for the English people. Central to that loss of vision has been the loss of the British Empire, wherein England played a defining role. . . . As the vision for Britain became more introspective, I believe the United Kingdom became more self-absorbed’. Again, which is it: England, Britain or the United Kingdom?

“This uncertainty somewhat undermines the important point the Archbishop makes in this section, which is something I very much agree with: ‘there has perhaps never been a better time to re-state this question as to how England might re-discover a noble vision for the future? From my own standpoint I believe that it is vital that England must utilize the challenges posed by the current economic turmoil and in restating the questions posed by Bishop Montefiore, England must recover a sense of who she is and what she is’.

“In restating those questions, England must ask them from the standpoint of England, not Britain. Indeed, the ambiguous interdependency between that nation and that state respectively is very much present in Hugh Montefiore’s sermon to which Archbishop Sentamu refers: ‘I sometimes fear that the people of this great country, having shed an Empire, have also lost a noble vision for their future. How can we rediscover our self-confidence and self-esteem as a nation?’ What is ‘this great country’ and which is ‘a nation’: England or Britain?

“This is not mere semantics but goes to the heart of the question about whether we can rediscover a sense of national identity (‘England must recover a sense of who she is and what she is’) and purpose in the post-imperial age. This is especially critical, as Sentamu argues that we need to draw inspiration from that very imperial past to redefine our mission (including Christian mission) and values for the present and future. But can we succeed in defining and celebrating a distinctive Englishness and vision for England if we do not disentangle the core identity of England from that of Britain, as John Sentamu appears not to be able to do? As he writes: ‘Some English people don’t like to say anything about their heritage, for fear of upsetting newcomers. My question to them is simple: Why do you think we came here? There is something very attractive about the United Kingdom. That is why people stay! As a boy in Uganda, I was taught by British missionaries. Just as foreigners brought the Christian Faith to England and the rest of the UK, so British foreigners handed on the baton to me, my family and my forebears. . . . All I am doing now is to remind the English of what they taught me’. All very fine stuff. But who in fact taught him his faith: the English or the British? And which country is it that foreigners come to and like so much: England or the UK?

“As I say, the distinction is far from semantic, as we are living in a political and cultural climate in which England and Englishness are very much being suppressed in favour of Britain and Britishness, and a re-telling of the whole narrative of English history, values and identity is being made as that of Britain. Without defining and affirming an Englishness distinct from Britishness, there will be no English future to build for, the hope for which Archbishop Sentamu expresses at the end of his sermon. Just as he juxtaposes the traditional British patriotic hymn of ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ with the English hymn of ‘Jerusalem’.

“So perhaps I was right in my previous comment, after all, to say that the CofE needs to work out whether it is primarily English or British in order to be in a position truly to speak for England and express an authentic vision for England – as England”.

Thinking about this further, I wonder if this overlapping of England and Britain in Sentamu’s speech is not so much a case of confusion as a reaffirmation of the very anglo-centricity of traditional Britishness. In my last post in this blog, I described the way in which Gordon Brown’s Britishness agenda draws on English people’s traditional non-differentiation between Englishness and Britishness to enlist their identification with a new Britishness that makes no reference whatsoever to Englishness or England – literally: the words ‘England’ and ‘Englishness’ are erased from the official lexicon, and are replaced by concepts of Britishness and Britain that take over all the characteristics of their English precursors, including that of the sovereign national identity at the heart of the UK state.

This attempt to appropriate English nationhood and sovereignty to a British state that has hitherto been primarily an instrument of English power has brought about a profound schism in the English-British identity, with many English people coming to reject Britain and Britishness altogether because they no longer seem to represent a vehicle and expression of English-national pride and identity. These latter are what John Sentamu has affirmed in his sermon: but not as being ineradicably at odds with Britain and Britishness but as constituting and epitomising all that is best about Britain – in both its imperial past and its multicultural present.

As this restatement of the positive characteristics of Englishness is a reinstatement of Englishness at the heart of Britishness, it is not surprising that the Archbishop’s list of English values closely resembles similar lists of British values that are regularly trooped out: “fraternity, law, liberty, landscape, language, magnanimity, monarchy, a thirst for knowledge, and a reverence for titles and status. But along with these I would also add, an ability to cope and not make a fuss”. Lists such as these are of course highly disputable, both as typifying the English and in relation to whether they are more aptly extended to all the people of Britain, not just the English. However, the point I would emphasise is that even when adduced as a set of British values, qualities such as these are by default ascribed to the English, as it is the people of England that are intended to embody those values most ‘quintessentially’.

Another question, raised by the Archbishop himself, is whether these things are actual characteristics of English / British people or virtues, as the lists often include qualities with a moral tenor such as fairness, tolerance, honesty and respect for the rule of law. And again, are these ‘virtues’ that the English (and / or British) exemplify to a high degree in some way, or are they mainly characteristics that we hold up as ideals to which we aspire but which we very often fall short of in practice? The same could be said of some of the other qualities commonly termed ‘British values’, which are in reality political ideals or civic virtues, such as: liberty (ironically, a favourite of the oh-so un-libertarian Gordon Brown), equality, fraternity (in the Archbishop’s list), democracy, justice, and hard work. Are these typical characteristics of English / British society or do they merely reflect our aspirations for the way we would like Britain to be – some might say, all the more held up as an ideal the more they are in reality absent, as in the case of liberty alluded to above, or hard work, which Gordon Brown hammers on about increasingly as unemployment rises?

Come what may, whether we hold virtues or values to be more important or revealing about us goes to the heart of what we think should be the fundamental principles by which we live our lives as a nation – however much we do in reality live our lives by those principles. And there’s no doubt that Archbishop Sentamu’s intervention is part of an attempt to reaffirm Christian faith and traditions as the prime mover that has shaped the ‘moral character’ of England, and to reconnect English people to Christianity in the present:

“Whilst it has been suggested by some that virtues such as fair play, kindness and decency are part of any consideration of what it means to be English, the question as to where these virtues came from is usually overlooked. It is my understanding that such virtues and those associated with them, which form the fabric of our society have been weaved through a period of more than 1,500 years of the Christian faith operating in and upon this society.”

Interviewed for the second part of Matthew D’Ancona’s two-part Radio Four series on Britishness (which is basically a plug for a book on the same theme D’Ancona has co-written with Gordon Brown – play-back available only till Tuesday 14 April), the soon-to-retire Catholic Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster Cormac Murphy-O’Connor also emphasised the precedence of Christian virtues over secular values. This was, O’Connor explained, because virtues were unchanging principles that give order and meaning to people’s lives, while secular values are continually evolving in line with changes in social mores and material circumstances. A solid core of belief in timeless virtues thus provides a sense of rootedness in a world that can otherwise appear alarmingly mutable and unstable. From a Catholic perspective, these universal principles by definition transcend the individual nations that attempt to live by those principles. All the same, one implication of Cardinal O’Connor’s words was clearly that the principles of Christian faith make at once a higher and deeper claim to our allegiance than the merely civic and secular values that Brown and D’Ancona identify as the founding principles for a multi-cultural 21st-century Britain.

What was even more thought-provoking was D’Ancona’s interview with the leading cleric in the Anglican Communion, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. This was firstly because of what it left out. On the preceding Sunday, on the Radio Four programme of the same name, they played an excerpt of D’Ancona’s interview with Williams where the author was trying to get the Archbishop to talk of the ways in which Christianity had helped mould Britain’s ‘national identity’. Williams deftly side-stepped this trap by agreeing that Christianity had been formative of “England’s national identity, let alone that of Britain” right from the very start of England’s history as a nation, when it helped to bring together the different Anglo-Saxon tribes into a unified kingdom – a history which Archbishop Sentamu also makes reference to in his sermon. So Rowan Williams refused to allow the Church of England to be used to support D’Ancona’s Britishness agenda by confirming a narrative whereby England’s Christian history had been one of many strands contributing to the development of something such a British national identity and set of values today – which would in fact confine the Church and England to the status of historical entities, rather than as continuing communities with beliefs and traditions distinct from those of modern secular Britain.

As I say, D’Ancona’s interview on the Britishness programme itself was revealing through its omissions, one of which was this very excerpt, which was conveniently edited out of the final broadcast. The part of the interview that D’Ancona chose to focus on in the programme was where Williams was making out a case in favour of the Church of England retaining its established status. Williams argued that this actually helps to anchor a multi-cultural society as it provides a solid foundation of core values, mutual respect, and a model for interaction between all the different ethnic groups – whether or not they fully subscribe to the religious basis for those principles. Indeed, Williams maintained, it was his experience that those of other faiths and of none often told him they valued the established status of the Church of England for this very reason. Clearly, those coming to England – especially those with a strong religious background – value the fact that there is a religious voice and an ‘official’ faith at the heart of the British Establishment. This corresponds to the experience of their own cultures, where there is often a formal, state religion, or certainly a majority religion; and it also constitutes something like a formal set of fundamental English beliefs that enables them to better understand how some of their own cultural and religious practices might conflict with English traditions, and to negotiate a path of integration into British society based on respect for its most deep-rooted norms and values.

Conversely, the absence of a strong religious centre to English and British life can engender a lack of respect and even fear towards our society on the part of migrants, which can lead migrant communities to retreat into their own ghettoes, and may in extremis even contribute towards fanatical jihadist ideas that Islam should become the dominant faith of Britain. Similarly, a lack of a grounding in true Christian principles – including loving the stranger and welcoming those of other faiths from a position of security in one’s own faith – can increase misunderstanding and hostility to those of other faith traditions, obscuring the fact that there is often more in common between people of different faiths (at least with respect to ethics and social values) than between those of any faith and those of none. This touches upon what Archbishop Sentamu means when he writes about ‘magnanimity’ as both an English characteristic and a Christian virtue. This goes beyond the mere tolerance that Gordon Brown and the Britologists spout on about, a quality which can imply division and lack of engagement with those of different backgrounds that one is tolerating. By contrast, magnanimity implies an openness towards the stranger, and a proactive effort to engage with them, to share with them what one has and is, and together to create community.

Matthew D’Ancona insidiously characterised Rowan Williams’s thoughtful reflection on the value of an established faith as ‘clever’ – implying that it was a sort of casuistic attempt to make out that the Church of England could provide a more pluralist, tolerant and even liberal basis for a modern multi-cultural society than the form of secular liberalism that D’Ancona clearly wishes to set up as the fundamental credo of a 21st-century British ‘nation’. This was clear from the end of the Britishness programme – immediately after the edited interview with Rowan Williams – where D’Ancona himself goes into sermon mode, arguing that it should be possible for secular British society to agree a set of fundamental moral and philosophical principles (“lines in the sand”, as he put it) that are non-negotiable. These would constitute a similar set of core British values to that which has hitherto been provided by the Church of England (as Rowan Williams would argue) and fulfilling the same sort of function – providing an ‘official’ statement along the lines of: ‘this is Britain; this is who we are and what we believe’ – enabling those of other backgrounds who settle here to understand and respect British society, and adapt to it.

The difference is that these new values are profoundly secular and liberal; and D’Ancona’s new British nation-state would undoubtedly be secular in its constitution – not an established religion in sight. Indeed, I would characterise these values as ‘fundamentalist’ or ‘absolutist’ liberalism. For instance, two examples of non-negotiable values that D’Ancona skirted past in his final flourish were gay rights and women’s rights. No objection whatsoever on principle. But the anti-religious thrust of D’Ancona’s argument suggested that what we would end up with is more of what we have already endured under New Labour: certain so-called gay and women’s rights overriding and even obliterating the rights of religious groups to believe and do otherwise, and to preach and teach against certain practices – at least, from a government-sponsored pulpit. The ‘right’ of gay couples to adopt children taking precedence over the conscientious objection of Christian adoption agencies, forcing them to close; the ‘right’ of Lesbian couples to both use IVF to conceive children and be registered on the birth certificate as the genetic parents (even if neither of them actually are), obliterating the right of the child to a father; the ‘right’ of women to abortion, to the extent that – and this is quite conceivable – medical staff who refuse to support or carry out abortions could be prosecuted or struck off.

These and more are the kind of ‘British values’ that D’Ancona and Brown would have as the underpinning of their cherished ideal of a ‘Nation of Britain’ – indeed, Brown voted for them all, plus hybrid human-animal embryos, in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, where he came very close to forcing Christian conscientious objectors among the Labour ranks to support the government or else lose the whip. This is ‘tolerance’ of extremes of Brave New World social, and indeed genetic, engineering pushed to such a degree that it tips over into intolerance towards those who dare to disagree out of adherence to more traditional beliefs and models of society. This is liberal fundamentalism, which relativises any claims to absolute truth, and any statements of fundamental right and wrong, other than its own.

And this is a Britishness finally stripped of any fundamental affiliation to the Christian faith and tradition. The English Christian faith and tradition, that is. To tear the English heart out of Britishness, you have to de-christianise Britain; and to de-christianise Britain, you have strip out its English centre. And that is because England is a Christian nation. The large majority of English people may no longer attend church services on a regular basis; but English mores and the English character have been moulded by the faith over centuries. And an England in touch with its roots is an England that recognises how much it owes to the Christian tradition.

Perhaps, then, the reawakening of a distinctly English national consciousness will also lead to a re-evaluation, indeed a renewed valuing, of England’s Christian character and heritage – its virtues even, and its vices. If so, the Church of England may feel increasingly empowered to speak out on behalf of England and in England’s name, and so provide the moral leadership that is necessary in the fight to resist both the total secularisation and the ‘Britishisation’ of our proud and Christian land.

Presumed Consent

There was much discussion in the media yesterday about whether the government would or should change the legislation on organ donations, so that there would be ‘presumed consent’: it would be assumed that everyone was happy for their organs to be transplanted after their death into people who needed them; and you’d have to opt out of this by explicitly stating that you didn’t want this to be done.

Of course, what was not to the fore of the media discussions was the fact that the issue related to England only. The media, as usual, failed to make this clear. The BBC news website story compares Gordon Brown’s approach with the lines taken in Scotland and Wales – so, reading between the lines, you can work out that the story relates to England only – but it doesn’t spell that out; and it’s placed in the ‘UK’ news section of the site, rather than the England section.

I must admit I was rather angry when I heard that GB [Gordon Brown] wasn’t ruling out introducing presumed consent legislation (to England) despite the recommendation of the expert committee. Typical prime ministerial arrogance; plus, as a Scottish-elected MP, he has no right to impose this on England, whatever you think of the whys and wherefores of the issue. This contrasts with the approach taken in Scotland, in fact, where they’ve concentrated on a public-information campaign, which has significantly increased the number of donors coming forward. They’re initially going to try this approach in England, too, apparently; but GB has rather pre-empted the outcome by his posturing on the subject today: the clunking fist getting things done. Well, I feel like saying ‘p*** off back to Scotland, Gordon; and let the English decide for themselves on this issue’.

In fact, if you wanted to really push the boat out on this one, you could say presumed consent – even in the absence of actual, positive consent – is a metaphor for how the UK government presumes that English people consent to all the legislation (including all the civil liberties-infringing laws) that is enacted on their behalf by a UK parliament that is neither a legitimate nor representative parliament for England in most of what it does. Never mind what the experts say; nor what English people may or may not think about it: Scottish-elected PM Gordon Brown may impose it on us (but not his own constituents) anyway. Arrogant b*****d!

As for the merits of the issue itself, I’m against presumed consent because it could end up overriding the feelings of bereaved family members and friends, particularly in cases where there hasn’t been time to discuss the issue with the dying person – e.g. in cases of sudden illness or accidental death. It’s really the feelings of the family that are most important; once you’re dead, you won’t mind what happens to your body, whether you regard death as a simple annihilation of all life and consciousness, or as the start of the new life of salvation. Besides which, I personally believe that human bodies are sacred, whether alive or dead; and they’re the property ultimately of God, not the state. Therefore, they should be treated with reverence and not as an automatic spare-parts warehouse; and the family’s act of surrendering their departed loved-ones’ organs should also be respected as a reverential, sacrificial gift of life to another person made possible by the death of their family member. This makes it truly Christ-like in a manner that I think must be pleasing to the Almighty – but how should I know?

In short, the government’s presumption to be able to use dead (English) citizens’ bodies in this way is another example of its de-sacralising of human lives and bodies, similar (but at the other end of life) to its presumption that it’s OK to experiment on human embryos and combine them with animal DNA for the advancement of science; and to abort foetuses whose existence is too distressing or inconvenient for their parents. At least they’re more honest in these latter instances, in that they’re not pretending to obtain any consent on the part of the (British) human beings they abuse and destroy in this way.

Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill: The Catholic Church Attacks Brown’s Achilles’ Heel

It intrigued me that it was the Catholic Cardinal of Scotland who chose this Easter to lead the campaign to persuade GB [Gordon Brown] to allow MPs a free vote on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. Why was it the Scottish Cardinal, Archbishop Keith O’Brien, and not the Cardinal for England and Wales, Cormac Murphy-O’Connor? At least if it’s O’Brien, that means the legislation itself must relate to Scotland as well as England and Wales, I thought to myself. This fact couldn’t be taken for granted, as nowhere in the coverage did it mention which countries of the UK the bill related to. I felt compelled to check; and, indeed, in the bit of the bill headed ‘Extent’ (section 67 of 69), it did indicate that the legislation would extend to “England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland”.

I was pleased that it mentioned all the nations of the UK individually instead of saying ‘Great Britain and Northern Ireland’. But any illusion that this did constitute a reference to England as a distinct entity was brutally swept away by the thought that this phrase in fact acknowledges only three legal entities, or rather three jurisdictions: those of a) England and Wales, b) Scotland and c) Northern Ireland. Well, let’s console ourselves with the thought that at least in law England still exists as a formal entity, albeit joined at the hip to Wales, which shares its legal system.

But I digress. So, given that the bill related to retained matters (science, social equality and medical ethics), there was nothing untoward about the fact it was a senior Scottish Catholic churchman who was selected to voice the Church’s criticism of the bill and demand a free vote. But why choose a Scot in particular? Because, over and above Catholic MPs, particularly Labour ones, it was Scottish Catholic, and more generally Christian, voters who were being targeted. The Cardinal was not only urging GB to concede that MPs should be allowed to vote with their consciences but was stating that, in conscience, no Catholic MP could do anything other than vote against the bill. And if, despite the Church’s round condemnation of the bill as being un-Christian in its ethical principles, GB still insisted on whipping the vote, then, by implication, the Labour Party led by GB could not take the Scottish Catholic vote for granted in subsequent elections.

How significant a factor would the loss of the Catholic vote be to Labour, particularly in Scotland? It is the case that most Catholics in Scotland have traditionally voted Labour. More generally, it’s been suggested that the Catholic vote throughout the UK helped Labour secure its third term. The Church in Scotland has threatened before to urge its members to withdraw their support from Labour for creating a “morality devoid of any Christian principle”. Objections to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill have been voiced in similar terms. In an interview on BBC Radio Four’s World at One programme on Good Friday, Cardinal O’Brien referred (and I paraphrase) to the weird, un-Christian ethics that New Labour was promoting. This is what I would call its – and, in particular, GB’s – secular-British values of economic, social and technological progress. Labour spokespersons who have defended the bill have spoken of the benefits the research using hybrid human-animal embryos would procure in terms of treating chronic illnesses, of the importance of advancing (British) science and of the leadership position that permitting such research now might give Britain in the market for the new therapies that could result (partly because many other leading developed economies have banned the research on ethical grounds). All well and good; but the ends don’t justify the means: if what is being proposed is fundamentally morally wrong, then we should just try to achieve those economic, social and scientific goals by other means.

But could the Catholic Church actually deliver this transfer of electoral allegiance away from Labour on the part of its adherents? Well, it has to be said that the condemnation of the Bill in Cardinal O’Brien’s sermon today, and particularly the attack on GB for sponsoring the Bill, pulls no punches. One passage in particular contains a series of sentences unambiguously attributing responsibility for the ethically condemned aspects of the Bill squarely to GB:

“He is promoting a bill which will add to the 2.2 million human embryos already destroyed or experimented upon.

He is promoting a bill allowing scientists to create babies whose sole purpose will be to provide, without consent of anyone, parts of their organs or tissues.

He is promoting a bill which will sanction the raiding of dead people’s tissue to manufacture yet more embryos for experimentation.

He is promoting a bill which denies that a child has a biological father, allows tampering with birth certificates, removing biological parents, and inserting someone altogether different.

And this bill will indeed be used to further extend the abortion laws.”

Any Catholic hearing or reading this would be left in no doubt that GB and New Labour had put themselves morally beyond the pale if they push through this Bill by denying their MPs a free vote. And this could be an electorally significant factor, especially on GB’s Scottish home turf. Significantly, the SNP has not missed the opportunity to make it clear that their MPs will be given a free vote.

And it’s not just Catholics who will be urged to take a long hard look at Labour from an ethical perspective. I doubt, for instance, if many of the God-fearing folk of Kirkcaldy will be too impressed by GB’s wholehearted support for measures that are repugnant not only to most believers but to the much-vaunted British senses of decency and fair play – in this instance, fair play not just towards embryos but to children denied a right to a father (see my previous discussion). Will the son of the manse be going to the kirk this Easter Sunday morning, I wonder?

So all of this places GB in an uncomfortable double bind: carry on denying his MPs the right to vote against the Bill on grounds of conscience, and risk being seen as un- (if not anti-) Christian, and losing the Catholic and Christian vote – particularly damaging in Scotland; or back down, and again be seen as indecisive and as not having the courage of his convictions owing to his obsession with ensuring Labour can be re-elected into power next time.

Happy Easter, Gordon!

New Labour, Brave New World: Equality for all – except children, fathers and conscientious objectors

Are we witnessing the start of ethical mono-culturalism? I had a mini-debate on ‘mono-culturalism’ with Gareth Young on OurKingdom the other day. For me, this term refers to the would-be imposition and engineering of a new secular-liberal Britain and understanding of Britishness, as part of the creation of a unitary British national identity and its supporting value system. This involves potentially riding roughshod over conscientious objections – often but not always based on religious conviction – to things like adoption by gay couples or abortion, both of which are proclaimed as ‘human rights’.

Without wanting to get into the whole argument about whether or not such things are indeed rights or not, another intimation of the rise of mono-culturalism has come in the last couple of days with the news that the parliamentary Labour Party was intent on ‘whipping’ the vote on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill: forcing Labour MPs to vote in favour of the government-sponsored bill, even though it contains measures that many MPs object to on conscientious grounds. These contentious provisions include allowing the creation of animal-human hybrid embryos for the purpose of medical research, and removing a legal obligation to respect a child’s ‘need for a father’ so as to allow both partners in a Lesbian relationship to be registered as the parents of children born through assisted conception.

The nature of the conscientious objection to each of these provisions is different. In the former case, it involves reference to concepts of the sanctity and integrity of the human person, which extends even to the embryo. In the latter instance, this involves reference to a child’s ‘right’ to have a father, based on an understanding of human nature and, for religious persons, of humanity’s place within a divine order of creation. It’s this particular topic I’m interested in discussing here because it involves a secular concept of equality and the attempt to impose this concept over and above the moral objections to it.

The heart of the matter, from the ethical and egalitarian perspective, is the bill’s proposal that licensed agencies providing IVF (in-vitro fertilisation) and other fertility treatments to women in same-sex relationships (whether civil partnerships or not) no longer need to take into consideration the ‘need for a father’ on the part of the resulting child. The intention behind this is to enable lesbian couples or individuals to have equal access to this form of fertility treatment to that afforded to straight couples.

You could argue that the removal of the reference to the child’s need for a father is merely a legal technicality clearing the way for Lesbian IVF. But can something so fundamental be literally written out of the legislation simply to facilitate an extension of ‘reproductive equality’? Do children not in fact need a father? And do they not have the right to a father founded on this basic human need? This belief, in essence, is the basis of the conscientious and / or religious objection to the measure.

In addition to the ethical arguments, which are highly complex in themselves, there are at least two problems from the egalitarian perspective with this effacement of the ‘need for a father’:

1) it sets a legal precedent, whereby a piece of legislation explicitly minimises – even discounts altogether – what could be seen as a universal human need. Subsequent legislation or legal cases could draw on this precedent to discredit the notion of a child’s need for a father in other circumstances; for instance, in child custody cases where a bias in favour of the view that children’s need for a mother is naturally greater than their need for a father could be unfairly decisive

2) the proposed legislation actually goes further than merely expunging the reference to the need for a father: it creates a right for the lesbian partner of the woman who gives birth to the child to replace the genetic father on the child’s actual birth certificate. This means, potentially, that two women (and at least one of the women) could be registered as if they were the child’s biological parents, even though it’s possible that neither of them are the genetic parents (in the case of IVF involving donor ova from a third woman, for instance). Indeed, should the donor ova come from the lesbian partner who is not carrying the baby (genetically, the mother), it is not her but the birth mother who will be registered as the real mother. The second parent in both cases – the one who fills the vacated space of the father on the birth certificate – is not registered either as ‘the father’ or as a second ‘mother’ but as a ‘parent’.

While the different possible birth-registration scenarios are mind-boggling with respect to their twisted terminological logic and ontological distortions, the point in relation to the child is not only that it is considered to not have a valid need for a father but, in legal terms, not to have a father at all. This is, contradictorily, despite the fact that the law also continues to recognise that children resulting from lesbian IVF do have biological fathers and, once they reach the age of maturity, they have the right to learn who they are and to try to contact them if they wish. But the difference is that, officially, this donor of the sperm that has created the child is just that: a sperm donor and not a father in either an emotional / social sense (such as with an adoptive father, for instance) or genetic sense: where the lesbian partner is registered as the ‘parent’, the genetic father loses his right in law to be considered even as the genetic father.

This means that the child that is being deprived of its right to have a genetic father that they do not know, even during childhood. This is in contrast to the circumstances of IVF children who have parents of both sexes where the genetic father is not the social father, or adopted children. In these instances, the child is still entitled and able to know that they have a genetic father even if they know next to nothing about that person. The child with two registered female parents, however, does not even have this right and existential possibility. Setting aside the fact that this makes the law not just an ass but a liar (because the child in question does have a genetic parent), this is also an inequality compared to other children who don’t know their biological father. Who knows what psychological harm could be caused by this sort of officially sanctioned deceit? It’s surely far more likely that children in this situation would be damaged by the absence of a father than if the existence of a biological father can at least be acknowledged. So in the name of equality to lesbians a potentially egregious inequality towards IVF children is to be legally sanctioned.

In addition to treating lesbian-IVF children unequally, the proposed bill is also grossly unjust towards the fathers concerned. Admittedly, children resulting from such procedures retain the right to seek out their genetic fathers when they reach adulthood. But even then, the fathers have no legal right to call themselves fathers, even though they are so in biological terms. Their status remains that merely of sperm donors. Of course, these are highly exceptional cases; but they could have huge ramifications for the legal status of fathers in general. I’ve suggested one example above (reference to the rights of fathers in child-custody cases). But how about male gay couples becoming parents through assisted conception? Could it not be argued that, in the name of equality, they should have the same ‘right’ to be considered as the two legal parents and that, accordingly, the law should include no formal recognition of a child’s ‘need for a mother’. Similarly, why should donors of sperm to lesbian couples be treated differently to donors of sperm to straight couples, where the sperm donor retains his legal right to be recognised as the biological father?

But clearly, something such as the removal of legal recognition of children’s ‘need for a mother’ would not, and should not, be accepted: children do need mothers and have a right to know that they have a mother, even if they do not know who she is. But why does the reverse not apply equally? If fathers can be legally relegated to the status of mere sperm donors, why shouldn’t women be legally relegated in analogous circumstances to the status of mere ovum or womb donors? The unequal provisions of the proposed legislation do indeed appear to imply that motherhood is deemed to be somehow more integral to the processes of conception, birth and child rearing, and their associated emotional needs, than fatherhood. In the specific context of the bill, the ‘need’ to be a parent on the part of lesbians is accordingly recognised as being at least equal to that of straight couples also seeking IVF and other fertility treatment. But as a consequence, the ‘right to motherhood’ of lesbians is being prioritised over the child’s ‘right for a father’ or the father’s ‘right to be recognised as the father’. And so, in the name of equality, notions of the sanctity of fatherhood (its sacred character as decreed by God) or simply of father’s human rights are being overridden, as are the sacred / human rights of children who need fathers.

But defenders of the government would point to the fact that Catholic MPs who object to aspects of the Bill have been given a get-out clause that enables them to refuse the whip and vote with their conscience. Well, maybe; but this does in fact apply only to Catholics, not to members of other Christian denominations, of other faiths or of none who have ethical objections to the Bill. So not only are some women’s rights to equality greater than the rights of the children and men affected by those women’s choices to be treated equally to other children and men in similar circumstances not involving lesbian parents; but also, some conscientious objections (those of Catholics) are considered as carrying more weight than others.

Apparently, then, under New Labour, some women are ‘more equal’ than some children and some men. And the secular concept of equality that is behind this unequal egalitarianism proceeds from an assumption that if an individual has a ‘need’ that society recognises (e.g. lesbian women’s ‘need’ to be mothers), this need must accorded equal ‘treatment’ by society and the medical profession. But in the recognition of these needs, the equal needs or conscientious objections of others are overruled. Unless you’re a Catholic, that is: the New Labour secular-liberal orthodoxy has not (yet) decided to tackle the Catholic Church head on. Doubtless, many of the most ardent advocates of New Labour’s British-secular-liberal orthodoxy would like to see it do so.