There's intelligence for you....

Confirming our intuition that bishops of the Church of England are furiously back-peddling on the Church's opposition to gay marriage, the Bishop of Salisbury, 'Nick' Holtam has now declared himself in favour [here]

'He said: “We are living in a different society. If there’s a gay couple in The Archers, if there’s that form of public recognition in popular soaps, we are dealing with something which has got common currency.'

As someone has remarked to me, this is the elevation of sociology above theology. Actually, if this is the reasoning of those whom some of us fondly believe(d)  to be (at least 'mechanically') the successors of the apostles, this is the death of theology, certainly the death of Anglican theology.

He continued: “I think same-sex couples that I know who have formed a partnership have in many respects a relationship which is similar to a marriage and which I now think of as marriage.

“And of course now you can’t really say that a marriage is defined by the possibility of having children. Contraception created a barrier in that line of argument. Would you say that an infertile couple who were knowingly infertile when they got married, weren’t in a proper marriage? No you wouldn’t.”

It shouldn't really be necessary to point out to the Bishop of  Borchester - sorry, Salisbury - or anyone with a little knowledge of moral theology that the traditional view of marriage has never been defined by the mere "possibility" of having children. It is the unique complementarity of male and female, (openness to new life is an expression of that, but doesn't of itself define it) which is at the heart of the conjugal bond in the sacramental Christian understanding of marriage.

Ironically, in the wake of all that comes this curious (and pseudo-scientific) report saying that those who support political parties of the right were markedly "less intelligent" than those who vote for the left. [here]
That should help with the liberals' perennial smug, self-righteousness problem, shouldn't it? Re-education camps for the cognitive underclass and the resolutely politically incorrect? It would be for our own good, you know...