The Catholic church, which still hasn't come clean on its history of enabling pedophiles, of course had an immediate, absurd, comment. From Politics UK:
“The dangers of the changes that are being proposed to the very meaning of marriage will entail a breadth of change that most people, including our politicians, have simply not reflected on,” Cardinal Keith O’Brien, head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, wrote in a newspaper article.Who wants to get rid of the terms husband and wife? There will still be husbands and wives. Just more of them.
“Do people really understand that they will be sweeping the terms husband and wife from our marriage laws? Do they really understand that those who merely wish to modestly uphold their understanding of marriage could be disciplined in their places of work?”
As for the notion that Catholics won't be able to proselytize in the workplace, I didn't realized that that's part of the package you get when you hire someone who's Catholic - you're getting someone who plans on shoving their Catholicism down the throats of their coworkers.
I'm not sure I'd want to hire anyone - Catholic, Jewish, Muslim or atheist - who planned to come work and use my office as an opportunity to proselytize and/or judge the faiths of their coworkers. It's none of their business what faiths their coworkers have. And I'm rather shocked that the Cardinal would admit such an extremist notion, that Catholics plan to proselytize about their faith on the job.
Does this mean, for example, that public school teachers (meaning, city-run schools) plan to push their catholicism on young children of other faiths? That's a rather horrifying notion for a public teacher in a city school.
Catholics have the right to their own religious views. They don't have the right to try to jam their faith down the throats of non-Catholics. We have freedom of religion too.
Background on this story here.
