Angry in the Great White North

A gay man for Equal Marriage writes in 2004:

Believing someone is moral or immoral is one thing. Few people would care what the Catholic Bishops believed, if they did not try to force their beliefs on everyone.

What force was being applied?

Decades later, the Catholic Bishops are still meddling in our lives on a most personal level. It became personal in 2000 when the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto announced plans to marry us. Soon-after, the Canadian Catholic Bishops issued a statement that objected to the plans.

Unless the statement was delivered on the end of baseball bat, or attached to a lawsuit, what force?

When Canada's Governor General sent us a reply to our wedding invitation, the Catholic Bishops of Canada fired off letters of complaint to the Prime Minister and the Governor General.

Another letter.

They are trying again at the Supreme Court of Canada on Oct. 6 - 8 when the court listens to arguments for and against the proposed same-sex marriage legislation.

Listening to arguments amounts to force?

Canadian Catholics Bishops have, among other things, threatened our Prime Minister with hell and damnation, issued sermons and newsletters to Catholic voters, and still they have failed to impose their hateful views on the rest of Canada.

Sermons and newsletters. Ouch! And unless there is a trapdoor to hell, and two bishops manhandled the Prime Minister to the edge and threatened to toss him in, the threat of eternal damnation doesn't constitute force. It's just another statement.

This person has no idea what it means to "force" someone. To force someone would be to threaten them with something of value, for instance their physical well-being. Or their financial health:

We're all for reviewing and perhaps stopping tax hand-outs and government funding of Catholic institutions, if the Catholic Bishops continue their ways.

And he wants the reader to encourage the government to use its legislative power to threaten the Church if it doesn't stop, well, writing letters:

Write to, or phone, Canada's Prime Minister and Justice Minister, and Members of Parliament in support of ending the charitable status of the Catholic Church.

The Church writes letters. She issues statements. She participates in legal proceedings that it did not initiate but in order to contribute her thoughts to the debate.

But she is doing the forcing? Why are these people so afraid of words, so afraid that they will attempt to use real force to stop them?

Two reasons.

The first is subtle: like all progressives, the notion that people think differently from them is abhorrent. A perfect society can only exist if everyone is perfect, and that means, of course, achieving the perfection of thought that they, the progressives, have achieved. For the State not to use whatever force it has at its disposal to punish imperfect thoughts is to fail in its duty to progress to perfection.

Note that the Church is imperfect, not only because of her philosophy and teachings, but also because it refuses to force compliance. It relies on letters, and private discussions, and the force of reason, to earn followers, who are always free to leave, and who are always welcome to return when they are ready. The Church is clearly not a force for perfection, even if her doctrine was sufficiently progressive.

The second reason: hypocrisy.