Rights and Responsibilities

Ben Bradshaw thought he had David Davis on the ropes on Any Questions. Davis went onto the attack on Labour's record on liberties and Bradshaw fired back on Davis' record on homosexuals' rights. Davis had voted against homosexuals in the military, against the right of homosexuals to adopt, and against civil partnerships. Davis corrected him on the last point, pointing out that he was absent from the chamber on the last issue, leaving the Tory lead on the issue to be taken by Alan Duncan.
Has Bradshaw exposed Davis the Liberty Man?
Let's start with the easy one. Should homosexual men be allowed in the military? Essentially the case against was what they might get up to. But then again, ask the family of the Danish woman raped and murdered in Cyprus what heterosexual British squaddies get up to. The sad fact is that sex does lead to ill-discipline in the military - regardless of sexuality. But again, regardless of sexuality, it shouldn't.
Bradshaw 1-0 Davis
Adoption. The very association of the word "rights" with adoption is a complete failure on Bradshaw's part. No one has the right to adopt. The very concept ought to fill any decent person with horror. If there is a right to adopt, then anyone could seek to exercise that right through the courts. Adoption is a privilege to be granted with care, a responsibility to be exercised only by the most able. The question is not "do homosexuals have a right to adopt?" It is "what forms of relationship are an appropriate matrix for the development of a child?" On religious, scientific or sociological grounds, Parliament needs to provide proper statutory guidance on that question. So the debate cannot be about Parliament granting people an inherent right (rights normally inhering to people by virtue of some metaphysical consideration, such as human dignity or divine image bearing), it's about the appropriateness of relationship matrices. Bradshaw could claim Davis suffered from prejudices on this issue, but it's not a rights issue; others might point out the desperate need for more adoptive parents, but that's not about rights either. Own goal.
Bradshaw 1-1 Davis
Civil partnerships is far more complex, because the key issue is the relationship between such a partnership and marriage. The media, both for and against civil partnerships, have characterised it as "marriage"; the Government sought not to until a recent case in which spinster sisters living together sought to protect themselves from the inheritance tax due should one of them die. They wanted a civil partnership, which would recognise the contribution each made to the welfare of the other, the love that was there, and the difficulties the death of one would pose for the other. Then Harriet Harman came out to the effect that civil partnerships were to afford a legal framework equivalent to marriage for homosexual couples. So the media were right.
So the question comes down to what you think marriage is. It is a question of rights depending on how you define marriage and its spiritual, sociological and relational function.
You score the game.
Then factor in the rest of the Labour record: at least before Labour campaigners could turn up in Parliament Square without registering, at least 1 million innocent people weren't on a DNA register, at least before Labour there was not a threat of identity cards, at least thought was not policed, as it now is on a variety of questions of religion and sexuality ...
Good try, Mr Bradshaw: I hadn't thought of that one, and you were right to raise it. But I don't think it's enough, even if you win this set (which to my mind you don't, because I take a Bible-rooted view of marriage), to win the match.

Two footnotes.
Firstly, I've used "homosexual" not "gay". I understand "homosexual" as the opposite of "heterosexual", describing a sexual orientation. I understand "gay" as an identity-political label, associated with a political and lifestyle choice to emphasise sexual orientation as a marker of identity beyond any other. So gay belongs in the same category as feminist, Muslim, Christian, Marxist or any other identity label that claims overriding precedence in a person's make-up.
Secondly, I know Ben Bradshaw is homosexual. So? The issue is about rights here.

Prince of Egypt

There are few things that bring tears to my eyes like films; on that score, there are few films like Prince of Egypt. I don't even own a copy! I use short extracts for lessons, but I first saw it when unwell a few years ago. Back then I was considering a call to ministry and newly married. The scene in which Moses speaks to Zippora of his calling brought me to tears then. This time it was the scene in which Jocabed puts baby Moses into the Nile. He's sooo the age of my own son! I was almost in tears in front of year 7.
Why do I mention this on what is generally quite a high-minded blog? Because particularly in the songs, but also in the wonderful portrayal of the tenth plague, the filmmakers get the "drama of the doctrine". Okay, you might think Whitney Houston's "There may be miracles when you believe" is a bit short on Reformed Theology - and you'd be right. But in so far as Prince of Egypt is teaching doctrines, they are dramatic and dramatised, even dramaticised.
Yet Christians have been delivered not from earthly slavery into a land, but from darkness into His wonderful light (1st Peter 2:10). That is a far bigger drama! Yet do we see it that way? Rejoice in being swept up into the biggest movement of history, the greatest show in the world? I felt history was being made, like I was "glad to be alive" when the Berlin Wall fell: I rejoiced to be a human being - and I was only 12 and it wasn't happening to me. But here I am, a thinking 30 year old, and I really am part of the greatest story ever told, and that by no virtue of my own but purely by those of Him whose story it is. Wow!