✣ Highlights from the week online
Britain’s freedoms and a Tory threat “Brexit was supposed to liberate Britons from unaccountable government, PC orthodoxy, and high-handed bureaucracy,” wrote Sohrab Ahmari in Commentary. “But who needs Brussels mandarins when supposed Conservatives in Westminster are beholden to the same orthodoxies? The government is planning to make “an ultra-progressive sex education curriculum” mandatory. There will be no exceptions: children of all faiths will have to be taught about same-sex marriage and transgenderism. Ahmari noted that Justine Greening, the former education secretary who introduced the idea, had a clear motive: she told Sky News in July “that ‘it is important that the church, in a way, keeps up and is part of a modern country. We have allowed same-sex marriage, that’s a massive step forward for the better ... I think people do want to see our major faiths keep up with modern attitudes.’” The new rules make it even easier for the government to control what private and religious schools can and can’t teach about sex and gender – and it’s not clear whether parents will have the right to withdraw their children. “That this is happening under a Tory government tells you that the future of religious freedom and parental autonomy in the UK is bleak.” Why the Queen fascinates America At firstthings.com, another US-based writer considered an aspect of British government – in this case, the Queen. “Americans today know too little of the British monarchy we broke from more than two centuries ago,”: wrote Ramona V Tausz, but shows such as The Crown and The Coronation offered a chance to consider the virtues of crowning a head of state. Its importance is perhaps especially obvious at this turbulent moment in US politics. “There is something about the permanence and stability of the old-fashioned British monarchy that American viewers find refreshing.” Elizabeth II demonstrates something which our “egalitarian” age needs to remember, Tausz wrote. “Elizabeth is not called upon to entertain the people or use personal charisma to exert her influence upon them – she is there to symbolise England and thereby unify it.” The leper colony we struggle to escape Leprosy, wrote Fr Jerry Pokorsky at catholicculture.org, is a metaphor for sin. “God hates sin because sin defaces and destroys us. God is offended because sin afflicts us with moral leprosy.” Fr Pokorsky described a meeting of a school board, which discussed how to teach children about “obscene” practices. It felt like a kind of moral leper colony. But Fr Pokorsky had another worry. “I wonder if have become a member of a leper colony of clergy who, because of personal comforts and the safety of our beautiful communities, have become oblivious to the wolves attacking our children.”
