Christians threatened by Casey’s British values

A senior Government advisor, Dame Louise Casey, has said Christians in public life should not be allowed to hold traditional Christian views on marriage.

Speaking to MPs on the Communities and Local Government Select Committee, Dame Louise said: ‘it is not okay for Catholic schools to be homophobic and anti-gay marriage. … it is not how we bring children up in this country. It is often veiled as religious conservatism, and I have a problem with the expression “religious conservatism”, because often it can be anti-equalities. We have got to be careful that people can choose, obviously, to live the lives that they want to live, but that they cannot condemn others for living differently.’

‘like arguing with an alcoholic’

Catholic Bishop Philip Egan (Portsmouth) said any restrictions on Catholic schools passing on the Church’s moral teachings would be worthy of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. The bishop said it was increasingly difficult to engage in reasonable discussion and argument over anything to do with sexuality.

Trying to preach sexual morality in Britain has become ‘like arguing with an alcoholic‘, he said. ‘After a while, they won’t argue with you on grounds of reason, they just become furious and respond that way. There is something in our culture increasingly like that.’

Although Dame Lousie singled out Catholic schools, there are many Christians and other religious groups to whom her sentiments would apply.

Oath of ‘British values’

‘The Casey Review: a review into opportunity and integration’ was set up by Theresa May in July 2015.  It was ‘a review into opportunity and integration in some of our most isolated communities’.

Dame Louise was formerly at Shelter, the Home Office Anti-social Behaviour Unit and the ‘Respect Task Force’ according to a Government webpage.

She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2016 for ‘services to families and vulnerable people’.

In her review she calls for immigrants and public servants to take an ‘oath of British values’.

Her report proposed that migrants should swear an “oath of integration with British values and society” before they become British citizens.

‘Tolerance, democracy and respect’

Similarly, both Dame Louise and Sajid Javid MP, the Communities Secretary, are calling for civil servants and all in public office to swear an ‘oath enshrining British values.’ These are specified as ‘tolerance, democracy and respect’.

If a public official were to violate such an oath, they could be excluded from public office. A teacher would have to stop teaching. Even a nurse might have to quit.

Ofsted would be sure to police such a regime meticulously. Schools in the public system already have a statutory duty to promote homosexuality and transgenderism under the Equalities Act. Having an oath of office would intensify the pressure on every individual teacher.

Intolerant mindset

But looking deeper into the attitudes of Dame Louise reveals an intolerant mindset.  It is one probably owned by many people in government, officialdom and the media.

Firstly, she says one ‘cannot condemn others for living differently’. Well, we can. We call it ‘preaching conviction of sin.’ In Human Rights language it’s called ‘freedom of expression.’ And funnily enough, the Government does it, in campaigns against smoking and obesity. Ordinary people do it whenever they warn a friend about taking drugs.

But those have an impact on public health and the costs of the NHS! So does homosexuality. Currently, 50% of sexually transmitted diseases in the UK arise as a consequence of men having sex with men.

Even the BBC says rates among gay man are ‘soaring.’

Homosexual men are the main reservoir of rectal gonorrhea (no surprises there). There also lead the field in syphilis. The anti-retrovirals gay men take to stop HIV developing into full-blown AIDS (HAART) cost £320,000 per patient over a twenty-year period.

The only way homosexual men benefit the public purse, apart from taxes, which we all pay, is by dying younger than the average.  By doing so they reduce the demand on pensions. Sorry, but public health economics is not a pretty subject.

Whose children are they?

Secondly, ‘to be homophobic and anti-gay marriage … is not how we bring children up in this country’. Well, excuse me, but whose children are they? Dame Louise has the statist idea that the nation’s children belong to the Government.

They don’t. They belong to the nation’s families. And some of those families are liberal in their views while some are conservative. Some families are lazy.  Others are industrious. Some are rough and some cultured. Some wouldn’t know a spiritual aspect of life if it bit them. Others are deeply religious. It’s called ‘diversity’ in its truest sense. And when a nation’s government pontificates that it is ‘not okay’ for parents and teachers to convey to children that marriage is an ordinance of God between one man and one woman for life, you are living in a society with a death-wish.

Not to accept ‘British values’ becomes a thought crime

Thirdly, government appears to be moving towards a position where what people do in their destructive lifestyles is not just tolerated but celebrated and encouraged.  Meanwhile, what people think is condemned. Well did the bishop remind us of George Orwell and his prophetic book ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’.  In it, the state takes reprisals against society’s dissidents who commit ‘thought crimes’.

We are not allowed to ‘condemn others for living differently’, but the Government will condemn us for thinking differently. You do not secure ‘societal cohesion and unity’ by forcing law-abiding people to act against their conscience. Instead, you store up resentment and anger. Tolerance has to tolerate intolerance. Homosexuality is on such shaky intellectual ground it cannot allow freedom of religion and freedom of conscience.

A “British values” oath will sever our nation from its Christian roots. In doing so, politicians will saw off the very branch of our heritage they are sitting on.

Job 42:2 I know that thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from thee.

2Cor 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;