Article (Magnus Linklater): Kelly must face her tragic end - to resign on principle

[...] If her obligations to the Church outweigh her responsibilities to the Cabinet, then she may feel that she had no alternative but to keep the faith and resign. You cannot be both minister and one-woman opposition at the same time.

But what kind of message would her resignation send out? Catholic teaching on homosexuality remains intolerant, backward, illiberal and morally questionable. By insisting that it is a condition that is “intrinsically disordered” because it does not allow for the procreation of children, the Church places homosexuality outside the ambit of acceptable society. Even that wisest and most compassionate of Catholics, the late Cardinal Basil Hume, who explained that the term “ disordered” should not be taken literally, and who insisted that homosexuality itself was understood and accepted by the Church, was forced to concede that the homosexual act itself was “morally wrong”. Only if homosexual couples lived chaste lives, unimpaired by sex, could they be included by the Church.

That is as remote from reality as the Catholic position on abortion and contraception, both of which require a form of moral blindness to sustain them — no compassion for victims of rape, no understanding of the threat of HIV. Read more