Caring Christians

A Christian organisation with the unlikely acronym CARE has shown how bloody-minded and outright peevish it can be by sending letters to Scottish churches asking them to contact their local councils to urge said councils not to offer ceremonies to same-sex couples who register for civil partnerships.

This is in spite of the fact that any ceremony would not, anyway, necessarily have in it anything to do with religion. This is nothing short of absolute spite and the very antithesis of what Christians claim Christianity is about.

CARE stands for Christian Action Research and Education. ‘Education’? Give me a break! It used to be the National Festival of Light, and older campaigners will know what that lot were about (and still are under a more CARE-ing moniker).

This spiteful, malicious, vindictive, mean, nasty, vicious, malevolent bunch of fatuous, inane, irrational, pointless, pathetic, worthless, preposterous, absurd tossers say in their letter, ‘CARE believes that it is not appropriate for there to be ceremonies associated with civil partnership registration. To hold a ceremony would suggest that registering a civil partnership has the same status as a heterosexual wedding, which it doesn’t.’

Pardon me, but how exactly is it 'not appropriate'? What the hell has it got to do with any extraneous organisation if two people want to have a ceremony to mark their togetherness?

CARE urged all church leaders ‘as a matter of urgency’ to contact their local council to find out whether or not they will allow ceremonies for civil partnerships and also their local councillor to find out their position on the issue.

The new legislation doesn’t make provision for ceremonies, so such things are up to local authorities. Some, as we’ve seen in England, may decide not to offer facilities for ceremonies, or ceremonies themselves. Others, as we know, will do so.

CARE says, ‘Some registrars are unwilling to perform such ceremonies and there may be issues of freedom of conscience if registrars are compelled to perform these ceremonies.’

Well they should be fired, then, or put into a job that doesn’t come into conflict with their conscience.

Let's just hope the councils tell CARE where they can stick their insulting little missive.