The fuss about gay adoption has a simple solution. The Catholic Church should refuse the Government funding. Government has a right to dictate to the church about where it should place children who need adopting because it is paying for it. Whatever your views of whether homosexuals should be able to adopt children, you can hardly both take the money and exert control over how it is spent.
It is a perfectly reasonable and defendable stance to take, that children should be brought up wherever possible by a mother and father who stay together, but a government that provides the money to run adoption agencies has a right to say how its money is spent. Simple; the Catholic Church should pay for its own adoption agency and run things exactly as it pleases.
A people that relies on a government to do everything for it is suffering from a terminal sickness. We can only look longingly back at Mrs Thatcher who said to the sick man of Europe, "Take up your bed and walk." Private charities can do so much more than governments. Every year the government takes more and more of our money in taxation and intrudes more and more into our lives.
The Church has the great privilege that people can covenant money to them free of taxes. This just about amounts to the ability of Catholics to predicate their taxes to an adoption service that is Gay-free. All they have to do is work out how much of their tax payment was going to pay for adoption, and give an appropriate amount to their church with a note that such and such amount is for the Catholic adoption agency.
Richard D North, the political commentator has a similar plan for the BBC. The BBC is funded by a pernicious poll tax. My daughter, who is about to move into her new flat, found a missive from the TV licensing authority demanding that she attend a hearing to explain why she had not bought a TV license. It was dated before she had actually completed her purchase, let alone moved in. There was no television in the flat, and she hasn't decided yet whether to get one. It reminds me of a scene in the film of Dr Zhivago when Zhivago is called to appear before a People's Committee who have taken up residence in his own house. Only the appearance of his high ranking older brother saves him.
North recognizes that there are some good things in the BBC, like Radio 3 and Radio 4, which no commercial organization would ever run, and if it did we would be irritated to have to listen to the advertisements. The rest is mostly trash, indistinguishable from the rubbish served up by the commercial stations. It would be perfectly possible, says North, to set up a large charity like the National Trust or English Heritage to run quality radio and TV, and commercialize the rest. People are falling over themselves to visit National Trust properties - it cost our family less than £60 per year. There would be no shortage of takers for quality radio.
What about the quality TV programs like Morse and Pride and Prejudice? Actually Morse was produced by a commercial company, but I watch it on DVD, when I want to, without the interruption of commercials. It is probably available now, but if not, it will be shortly possible to download any program anywhere on a short term rental basis.
Good point about the church taking care of itself. While I want us to be able to legally voice our opinions in public as long as possible, I do think the church gets soft and lazy when everybody expects the government to solve everything. Of course I don't want churches to lose tax-exempt status, but if that is the only way we can preach Biblical truths then so be it.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I heard an interesting comment on gay adoption today. Isn't it interesting how the desire for gays to marry someone of the same sex is completely immutable, while the sexual make-up of parents is completely irrelevant?
I don't know what this says about the BBC but the Margaret Thatcher paragraph is a brilliant parody of HYS on their website.
ReplyDeleteThe irony is of course that the mantra that private charity can deliver better public services than the state is what has caused this row. The model of public services paid for by the state and provided by a third party has been bought into wholeheartedly by this government and even more so by Cameron, and indeed has much to commend it. However, the need for equity of access to services, and the accountability in the expenditure of public money requires a regulatory function on government and at some point values may clash, which is what is happening here. I entirely agree with you that the simple solution is for the Catholics not to take the money.
Arguing for private charity funded by private subscription to replace state funding simply ignores history. This is what the Victorian social disaster was founded on, and it leads straight to child prostitution, mass infectious disease and the workhouse. Unpopular causes, like mental health for example, will be ignored, and there are no longer enough Quakers around to stop us heading straight back to Bedlam. There is some good evidence that one of the reasons why Britain fell behind Germany economically in the late 19th century was because an atavistic model of capitalism led to an unhealthy and unproductive workforce compared with the more social model of capitalism under Bismarck. One of the big inspirations of the 06-14 Liberal government agenda was the collective horror at the ill-health of volunteers for the Boer War.
I'm afraid the North plan is nothing new and is stolen from David Elstein who wrote it for the Tories in 2004. Elstein is of course a former head of Sky and Channel 5 so hardly an disinterested observer.
It depends upon three fallacies. First, that the BBC is institutionally a left-biased organisation, so it isn't representing the society paying for it. This is absolutely unproven, and many, including myself, consider any biases that it has to be right-wing, it's just we tend not to shout as loudly, and as Colbert notes truth is now a matter of who shouts loudest.
Second, that the broadcasting is aimed at the middle classes and paid for by everyone. This is specious because all broadcasters in fact aim their programming ABC1s in the ages 25-54, so applies to all regardless of their funding mechanism.
Third, that only a few prestige services (always R3, R4, BBC4) are any different from what the commercial sector provides and these should be preserved and everything else should be privatized. Apart from the fact that this is logically opposed to point 2, this simply shows a lack of understanding: Radio 1, for example, has traditionally been light years away from commercial pop radio and played a large role in the success of British popular music, BBC2 was profoundly important in breaking new comic and dramatic talent and writers (in a way Channel 4 used to when it had a public remit).
In fact what Channel 4 has become, compared to where it was 15 years ago is about as good an argument for keeping the current arrangements that I can think of.