When I was young I thought how wonderful it would be if I could lift myself up. It really did seem that if I got strong enough in one arm, I could hoist myself into thin air, and carry myself along. Needless to say, all sincere attempts ended in my crashing to the ground. I soon discovered that I could lift myself sitting on the knot of a rope slung over the branch of a tree, but I was in the air precisely because the tree was firmly planted in the ground.

Something of my same youthful confusion seems to beset the Brits. As we recently reported, their Equality Bill was an attempt to enforce equality—a very particular notion of equality—with the brass knuckles of the law. Of course, even a light reading of the Bill reveals that its authors are not interested in equality, but are using equality to push forward their radical social and moral agenda. They are using equality to compel intransigent citizens, especially Jews, Christians, and Muslims, to accept homos*xuality and gender rearrangement—or else.

But suppose we take them seriously, and allow that the authors of the Equality Bill are actually interested in equality itself. What then? Can that save them? Over 1500 years ago, a Brit, St. Patrick, set about saving Ireland, and one of the things he saved them from was the horrible, inhuman practice of slavery. In fact, he excommunicated another Brit, Coroticus, for enslaving his new converts. In an interesting parallel today, Pope Benedict XVI is trying to save the Brits from themselves. He has issued an interesting warning, that "in some respects it [the Equality Bill] actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed."

That really gets to the nub of the issue. Human equality is not a fundamental principle. It is a principle that must be grounded in something else, something deeper, sturdier, and far more definite—the natural law. Without that foundation, the Brits will soon find their society crashing to the ground.

Let's see why equality itself cannot be a fundamental principle. Suppose we ask the rather obvious and potentially embarrassing empirical question, "In what way are human beings equal?" Are they all the same size? The same gender? Are they all equally strong? Intelligent? Beautiful? Handsome? Healthy? Athletic? Are they all the same age? Do they all sing equally well? Spell? Draw? Dance with equal grace? Do they all work with equal diligence? Are they all equally honest? Prudent? Courageous?

Obviously not. Where's the equality, then? If equality were a fundamental principle, it surely ought to be exceedingly evident. In geometry and arithmetic, it's quite clear. Why not in politics?

If we can't find equality in any particular human trait—beauty, intelligence, athletic ability—then perhaps we must dig deeper. It would seem that the only possible way to ground the equality of human beings is in the surprising assumption that they are all equally human.

That is, no matter how manifestly unequal we are in other respects, we are all equally human. That is the real foundation of real human equality. The foundation is not in equality but in humanity. And that means—here's the great sticking point—our humanity defines and determines our equality. That is what is meant by saying that the natural law is the foundation of equality. The natural law is simply the law of our being, the moral parameters that arise from what a human being is.

If we attack or undermine our humanity, that is, human nature itself, then equality disappears. Or to return to my original image, we come crashing to the ground because we have happily sawed down the tree upon which our equality rested.

To understand, let's go through a little historical exercise. Imagine what would happen if a particular people decided that human nature is not real, that there is no such thing as a definite and inviolable human nature. Instead, they assert, what we call "human nature" is the result of endless evolutionary accidents. What we call the "human species" is a mere historical snapshot on a timeline, a smear moving from apes to endless evolutionary possibilities. Those possibilities are measured in terms of the very endowments or traits that we find unequally spread among "human beings."

Thus, allowing the sick, homely, clumsy, dull-witted, and deformed to breed dilutes the efforts of the healthy, handsome, athletic, intelligent, and perfectly formed to reach ever greater biological heights.

Such is the key lesson from the horrors of the eugenic mentality that has gripped us since the late 19th century. Eugenics actively opposes equality because it rests on the destruction of common humanity.

"But that is not what the Brits Equality Bill is about!" some will argue. "In fact, it aims at protecting individuals from unequal treatment in regard to the 'characteristics' of 'age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, s*x, and s*xual orientation.'"

There's more than one way to destroy humanity. The Equality Bill destroys it by attempting to define humanity by equality, rather than equality by humanity. More accurately, it attempts to define humanity according to the equality of desire. The fact that someone desires something becomes the fundamental thing, not (as with the natural law) whether what they desire is in accordance with or against human nature.

This is most obvious in regard to the Bill's treatment of s*xuality. For the natural law, s*xuality is defined by the fact that a human male and a human female form a natural s*xual union that is the cause of human society itself. Human society therefore rests upon this s*xual union as fundamental, and human law should always protect and nurture it. That is why it protects marriage.

In the Equality Bill, s*xual desire—of whatever kind—is protected as fundamental. The notion that male and female are fundamental natural categories from which morality arises, has therefore given way to the notion that male and female are themselves s*xually insignificant. S*x has no natural source or orientation—and here comes the crash of equality—anyone who holds that s*xuality is defined by male and female in marital union will be forced by law to keep their mouths shut.

Of course, we must not forget the obvious demographic crash that is happening all over Europe precisely because secularized Europeans have long-considered heteros*xual procreation to be an interesting s*xual option among other equally attractive possibilities, rather than a fundamental natural goal defining s*xuality. The principle of the equality of s*xual desire is all too obviously contradicting the need for new generations to keep society running.

The same contradictions arise elsewhere, or will soon arise. The Equality Law protects pregnant women, but only if they accept that anyone has the right to kill her baby. The Equality Bill protects the aged, unless they are dispensed through euthanasia. The disabled will be protected from harm, if they happen to escape abortion or infanticide. Marriage will be protected, but at the expense of defining marriage to include even the most casual and temporary union of anyone with anyone. Your religion will be protected, as long as you don't believe that it actually determines what people should really believe and how they should act. 

In every case the result will not be equality, but the iron-fisted imposition of a radical secular agenda. The aged, infirm, disabled will be at risk; secularism will be the sole established religion; and marriage will soon disappear into mist. And where will the equality be then?

But will the Brits listen? Perhaps. An unidentified source at 10 Downing Street--Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s residence--is reported to have remarked, “We are clear that these parts of the Equality Bill should not go forward. The Pope's intervention has been noted.”

Who Was St. Patrick? - Video (0:59)

http://www.history.com/topics/who-was-saint-patrick/videos#st-patrick

History of St. Patrick's Day - Video (3:33)

http://www.history.com/topics/who-was-saint-patrick/videos#history-of-st-patricks-day

St. Patrick Is Honored Today Because He Was A Man of Courageous Faith

A fleet of 50 currachs (longboats) weaved its way toward the shore, where a young Roman Brit and his family walked. His name was Patricius, the 16-year-old son of a civil magistrate and tax collector. He had heard stories of Irish raiders who captured slaves and took them "to the ends of the world," and as he studied the longboats, he no doubt began imagining the worst.

With no Roman army to protect them (Roman legions had long since deserted Britain to protect Rome from barbarian invasions), Patricius and his town were unprepared for attack. The Irish warriors, wearing helmets and armed with spears, descended on the pebbled beach. The braying war horns struck terror into Patricius's heart, and he started to run toward town.

The warriors quickly demolished the village, and as Patricius darted among burning houses and screaming women, he was caught. The barbarians dragged him aboard a boat bound for the east coast of Ireland.

Patricius, better known as Patrick, is remembered today as the saint who drove the snakes out of Ireland, the teacher who used the shamrock to explain the Trinity, and the namesake of annual parades in New York and Boston. What is less well-known is that Patrick was a humble missionary (this saint regularly referred to himself as "a sinner") of enormous courage. When he evangelized Ireland, he set in motion a series of events that impacted all of Europe. It all started when he was carried off into slavery around 430."

Christianitytoday.com

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/1998/issue60/60h010.html

Just What Is the Natural Law?

In my years of teaching college I inevitably came up against an all too common set of confusions about the natural law. Clearing things up demanded first of all that students understand what the natural law isn’t.

The natural law is not just another name for the laws of nature. The natural law and the laws of nature are two quite distinct, although related things. We moderns tend to think only of the laws of nature, like the law of gravity, or law of inertia, or Boyle’s law. We often confusedly take them to be laws like “You must drive on the right side of the road” or “You must pay income taxes,” as things imposed more or less arbitrarily upon us from above—as if, for example, there were some independent entity, the law of gravity, that attaches to things and makes them heavy.

But in truth, what we call “law” here is merely a description of something about the things themselves. The law of gravity tells us something about the way different masses act. Boyle’s Law tells us something about the way that gases act under different pressures. Our nicely stated laws, even in mathematical form, are ways that we express regularities that arise from the way things in nature are.

The law of gravity pertains to anything that has mass—a planet, a carrot, a human being, and, according to King Henry IV, Paris itself. That is the case with most laws of nature. They cover a lot of different things.

Not so with the natural law. The natural law is the law of human being alone—not other animals, not birds, not rocks, not trees, not planets. The natural law arises from our particular nature. It is natural insofar as it is rooted in our nature, and moral insofar as our nature defines what is good and evil for us.

Well, just what are we? We are rational, moral animals—the only rational, moral animals. We are the one animal that must think even to survive, and the one animal whose actions are not governed by instincts but are judged by standards of good and evil. We don’t consider it cruel not to teach your dog to read, but we think that keeping children from getting an education deprives them of something they should have. We don’t jail rambunctious roosters for forcing themselves on beleaguered hens, but we send men to the slammer for rape.

Our status as the only rational, moral animal is the source of our natural belief that human beings are distinct from other animals. That is the origin of all laws against murder, for the notion of “murder” assumes that killing a human being is fundamentally distinct from killing a chicken, and that the murderer actually had the moral freedom not to kill (otherwise, jailing the man would make as much sense as jailing the knife). Let go of this fundamental assumption, and soon killing anything will be considered murder (as some animal rights activists maintain) and a murderer’s DNA will be the only culprit (as genetic determinists maintain).

This status as rational animal is exactly what is meant by the assumption that human beings are made in the image of God. The Ten Commandments are, in moral substance, not unique to the ancient Jews. As C. S. Lewis noted in his Abolition of Man, the moral commands to honor parents, not murder, not lie, not steal, and so on, are found everywhere. They are found everywhere because they arise from human nature. To ignore them, or manipulate them, can only result in the destruction of human nature, the Abolition of Man.

Dr. Benjamin Wiker

The Equality Law protects pregnant women, but only if they accept that anyone has the right to kill her baby. The Equality Bill protects the aged, unless they are dispensed through euthanasia. The disabled will be protected from harm, if they happen to escape abortion or infanticide. Marriage will be protected, but at the expense of defining marriage to include even the most casual and temporary union of anyone with anyone. Your religion will be protected, as long as you don’t believe that it actually determines what people should really believe and how they should act.

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