Because I have worked for it, I tend to care very much about my property. It matters to me that it be recognised as mine and that I be free to dispose of it as I wish. While I recognise that the right to property is not absolute, still projected curtailments of it ought always to be thought out very carefully.

The most widespread instance of property ownership is housing. For Britons today property means first and foremost a home that we own. But, as house-prices rise sharply, especially in the capital, this aspiration is increasingly beyond the reach for those lower down the income scale. Of course, it’s not as if the British have always owned their own homes. An Englishman’s home may well be something like his castle but, like universal suffrage widespread home-ownership is barely a hundred years old.

By its nature property ownership, like the vote, entails a stake in the country. It is the realisation of what the owner has worked for, or the actualisation of his or her creative potential. Far from being simply a response to the material need for shelter home-ownership reaches deep into one’s identity and becomes a part of self-understanding and of how one relates to others. In times gone by the village church, built by the villagers themselves, might well have been the only stone building for miles around, and it was in this place that collective identity was shaped. As resources have become more freely available we have taken to making our own homes out of durable materials and have established more private means for grounding ourselves and our families in land.

In the fifteenth century during the reign of King Henry VI it was established that men who owned property to the value of forty shillings per year should be entitled to vote. These became known as ‘forty-shilling freeholders’. Initially this was an attempt to avoid confusion with too many people standing for public office, but it served a dual purpose. By restricting the franchise to men of moderate wealth Parliament could be sure that those voting were not only responsible and capable of conducting their own affairs effectively but also that they had a demonstrable interest in running the country.

Such property-based restrictions on the franchise may seem archaic in the twenty-first century but as public disengagement with, and indifference, to politics continues to spread it may be time to see widespread home ownership as more than a popular aspiration and, like freedom of speech, as something integral to the democratic process itself.

Dr. Gosnell’s clinic, before it was shut down has been described by the prosecution as a ‘charnel house’. It was filthy. Pieces of equipment (including an emergency defibrillator and blood pressure monitor) were either missing or not in working order. The clinic was cramped and didn’t meet even the most rudimentary health standards. In an effort to save money Dr. Gosnell ordered the re-use of disposable surgical instruments. These often went un-sterilised and contributed to the spread of venereal diseases. As a result of this wanton neglect at least one woman died and many others had to be taken to nearby hospitals as the result of failed abortion procedures. Former employees of Dr. Gosnell’s clinic have testified that ‘hundreds’ of babies were born alive in illegal, late-term abortion procedures. Scissors were inserted into these babies necks and their spinal chords cut to ‘ensure foetal demise’. In one instance an abortion took place so late in the pregnancy that Dr. Gosnell is alleged to have said the baby was ‘big enough to walk me to the bus stop’.

In addition to the gruesome details of this ‘house of horrors’ Gosnell was in the habit of practicing racial segregation giving his black and ethnic minority clients even worse care than his white clients. He also kept the severed feet of babies he had killed in a jar.

That this case does the pro-choice camp no favours is hard to deny. The pictures submitted in evidence are, like many pictures from abortions, some of the most distressing around. The description ‘house of horrors’ is apt and it is not at all surprising that generally (though by no means exclusively) pro-choice media networks have been reluctant to cover this story. For the pro-life camp, and more pointedly for voters the case presents a strong ‘common sense’ argument against abortion. Gosnell’s criminal negligence aside the horrors of late term abortions and infanticide are an argument in themselves that such practices should be illegal.

In spite of this the pro-choice lobby has chosen to spin this story in the opposite direction arguing that the women who submitted themselves to Gosnell’s ‘care’ were desperate. Not only would they break the law by consenting to a late-term abortion but would also endanger their health to such an extent that one woman died. Whether legal or not women will, the IPPF argues, continue to risk their lives at clinics such as Gosnells who are willing to perform these late-term abortions. Surely, the IPPF argues, the sensible thing to do is to relax the restrictions on late-term abortions and give women hygienic and safe care. While one does not wish to diminish the tremendous anxiety and stress that an unexpected pregnancy can bring we do seem to find ourselves back at the ‘back-street’ abortion clinic argument that raged decades ago. If women are going to risk their lives to get rid of their unborn children the ‘only’ thing the state can do is make sure these women have late-term abortions under qualified medical supervision. The logic is easy to follow and one can see why the IPPF should make such a case.

In the 1960s this argument was persuasive. Women’s health was at risk in what were illegal abortion clinics but they still went. Without sonograms and photographic evidence the public were none-the-wiser as to what an abortion actually involved and the humanity of an unborn child was, to some extent, an open question.

But to relax abortion laws still further in the USA would still leave us with a dead baby. When confronted with the humanity of a child born alive as a result of a ‘failed’ abortion the IPPF’s representative in Florida was lost for words.  Asked if she accepted that the ‘patient’ in an abortion clinic setting could include a child born alive as part of a ‘botched’ procedure her reply was simply ‘that’s a very good question. I really don’t know how to answer that’. When asked if she thought the life of a child born alive in this setting ought to be preserved she said that this should be left up to the mother and her physician. Subsequently the IPPF affirmed that they oppose infanticide though this still raises the question of why they opposed Florida’s born alive bill in the first place whose expressed purpose is to prohibit infanticide.

The media silence on both of these cases is highly regrettable and even suspect. While any debate on abortion is bound to be fraught with difficulties, not least the sensitivities on both sides, it is clear that the debate needs to be held afresh. However, getting the pro-choice lobby to agree to debate will not be easy. After Dr. Kermit Gosnell the abortion debate has come full circle, but the pro-choice lobby appears reluctant to face the facts.

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The Kermit Gosnell Case: Portrait of the Culture of Death

But this duty is rarely fulfilled to the satisfaction of social justice without the intervention of a 3rd party such as the Church or the State. Where the Church once held sway in matters charitable the State has now largely taken over. For this reason the British Government (like many governments in developed countries) uses some of its revenue from taxation to support the weakest members in society who, through illness or other misfortune are unable to work.

It would be better if the richest in Britain gave their money freely to helping the poorest. There would probably be more compassion in the gift and donors would have a direct interest in how the money was spent. Those giving in this way would necessarily have a direct say in the kind of society and culture that they wanted to support. Questions about dole payments being spent on huge televisions or expensive trainers might actually receive some attention from donors who thought their money was being misspent. As it is, the government has little interest in being a kind of ‘culture-police’ in this way. There might also be a greater sense of accountability among recipients of charity and those who would wish to take advantage of such assistance in a dishonest way might be less so inclined when they knew it was a person they were defrauding rather than a bureaucratic behemoth like our very own Department for Work and Pensions. This is all very well but in the absence of a lively philanthropic culture in the UK it is difficult for such a vision to come anywhere close to reality.

Nonetheless, when helping the weakest members in society becomes purely a matter of government policies for taxation and expenditure it is easy lose sight of the moral duty that underpins this vital work. All sides can begin to foster illusions about what exactly the government is doing, illusions that are not helped by politicians apparently (though not always) more interested in votes than the common good.

From the point of view of the wealthy their rightful property is being forcibly requisitioned by a powerful organisation that they are powerless to oppose. Naturally they will move their money out of the country if not themselves as well. For beneficiaries of welfare payments the State has apparently bottomless pockets from which it pays for schooling, infrastructure, the military and politicians’ high salaries and expense accounts. If it can afford these, the reasoning goes, why must welfare payments be frozen or cut if the weakest in society have barely enough to live on? Both illusions are difficult to sustain in reality, but they also contain serious elements of truth and for this reason they will always be difficult to dispel completely. After all what right has the State to confiscate private property that has been hard-earned? Yet if the government indebts itself through wars in Afghanistan, Libya, Mali etc to the tune of millions of pounds why should it ‘penny-pinch’ over someone receiving £53 per week?

In the end, whether charity comes via the Church, the State or entirely from voluntary contributions the result ought to be the same namely that, in such an advanced society as ours everyone should have enough to live on and enough to support their families. In this, questions about the strong helping the weak are as much about an honest salary for honest work as offering assistance and cash handouts to the very poor. Disparities in wealth, while not bad in themselves, can be useful indicators of whether or not those lower down the income scale are receiving fair payment for their work when they must also be expected to provide for their families and their old age.

Unfortunately the concept of a moral duty for the strongest to help the weakest seems completely absent from the current debate in British politics, if only because politicians and commentators seem blind to the other possibilities. Repeatedly the focus is on how to remedy the Government’s deficit, the need for cuts and the plight of those at the bottom of the income scale, rather than acknowledging that the State is, presently, not well placed for facilitating philanthropy as it has done for the last 60 years.

The much derided (and perhaps now defunct) ‘Big Society’ seems to have been a brief attempt at resuscitating a culture of the wealthy helping the poorest where we might really all be in it ‘together’. But this was a government initiative to remedy a problem far beyond the confines of Whitehall. For those who really do object to the State taking a hand in redistributing wealth it would surely help their credibility (not to mention give them increased political and social influence) if they were to initiate welfare reform themselves along older and more private lines of philanthropy.

Recently this discussion has taken on more urgency as evidence is emerging that children as young as 8 are regularly accessing pornographic materials online. Quite apart from the damage that such material so easily leads to with young people (not to mention adults as well) is the concern that such widespread use of pornography is harming young people’s expectations of how sexual relationships should be conducted. This concern is particularly acute with boys who are even losing sight of what ‘consent’ means in relation to sex, and who increasingly feel they have an ‘absolute entitlement to have sex with girls, any time, any place, any where, with whomsoever they wished’.

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers recently passed a motion calling for teachers to be trained to give ‘age appropriate’ lessons to students regarding sex and pornography and the BBC aired a discussion on the subject of parenting and pornography. These are timely though one might wish for even more attention than a splash in the papers and a resolution from an annual professional conference, and a radio broadcast, for these matters have wide-reaching implications about how we view sex as a society and, crucially, the manner in which we create the next generation of Britons.

Importantly, ‘consent’ is a social construct. It is rooted in human nature and the basic need that humans have not only for sex and procreation but also for love and commitment. But as with any social construct it needs maintaining and so it is perfectly reasonable to say that it should be taught in school. But consent on its own is not a simple matter of saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’. It has to be informed to be true consent, and it is the process of teaching informed consent that pornography interferes with by encouraging models of behaviour that, while manifestly sexual have little or nothing besides to do with the real world.

In order to correct the misinformation coming from pornographers it will be necessary to be in possession of what is normative for sexual behaviour. This goes beyond conducting a population-wide survey of what most people do and into the realm of saying that one kind of sex is intrinsically good while another is bad. Informed consent is invariably the most readily accepted feature of any sexual relationship that government, schools, parents and social organisations are willing to support en masse but it is worth considering that, when taken in isolation, consent is not strong enough to offer a principled argument to teenage boys to avoid looking at pornography. After all, if a teenage boy finds a woman willing to act out whatever bizarre ideas he may have then, according to the rhetoric of consent alone, that is fine and whether pornography is unrealistic or not is just a red herring.

The reality is of course that consent is used as a proxy for a raft of more complex values including (but not limited to) respect, autonomy, procreation, commitment and love. All of these need patience and a healthy dose of realism that pornography has always been incapable of – one of the reasons why it has frequently been censored.

Consent is of course a serious issue for individuals in sexual relationships but for wider society it is actually procreation that ought to loom large in any debate about sexual relationships. Consent remains vital whatever the context, but it does so because coercive relationships, while not only harming those involved, also have the potential to harm children as well. These children may be planned or they may not be, but when they arrive this fact is irrelevant. Children need to be loved by their mother and father and with this goes respect, commitment and autonomy, all values that inhere in healthy sexual relationships as well. But without procreation we just have ‘consent’, and if that is all we have, then there is no principled argument against 12-year olds looking at porn.

One does not have to look far to find support for a truly free press among the great and the good, and in many ways journalism, unregulated by the state, is in effect an unofficial arm of good government. Where even democratic political parties might see mutual benefit for themselves in stitching up a deal at the expense of the electorate, the press remains at liberty to publish the inconvenient truth that would unseat an elected official or support a statesman whose name has wrongly been tarnished for the sake of personal political gain.

The press has no legislative or coercive power of its own and it has no royal charter exhorting it to ‘inform, ‘educate’ or ‘entertain’. Indeed it should have neither of these things, for in possessing them it would naturally become a part of the national establishment and forfeit its ability to remain completely independent from the state and so be fully able to exercise its critical faculties.

But while the press may be a kind of unofficial arm of good governance, this is a long way from saying it can operate outside of the law. No responsible government could fail to implement measures curbing the activities of journalists, newspapers or television where it was clear that wrongdoing was tolerated in the name of ‘getting the truth out’. Violations of privacy, such as the Leveson Enquiry investigated, are and have long been illegal. Press freedom never extended to allow phone hacking.

In a totalitarian regime one can understand a free press as a legitimate form of political resistance, but not in modern Britain. It is plain that the behaviour of the press has, in recent years, been far from commendable. The reputation of the tabloid press has sunk even lower than it was just five years ago and even the broadsheet newspapers are in danger of turning into an extension of daytime television.

There are no winners in the Royal Charter being established to regulate the British media, except perhaps a few celebrities who resent that their fame has brought with it the unwanted curiosity of some unscrupulous journalists. But it is also plainly true that there were no winners in journalists behaving unscrupulously in the first place. For all the moral pomp of journalistic criticism across the political and editorial spectrum, it is difficult to take what ‘the media’ says without a very large pinch of salt. The credibility of the press has been brought low, but not by government. It has been the media’s own abuses of its freedom that have tarnished its reputation for integrity and, most regrettably, harmed its effectiveness to freely criticise the state. The government’s new Royal Charter is a break from a tradition of liberty that we may live to sorely regret, but more regrettable still has been a gung-ho press with journalists more interested in causing a media sensation than in reporting the truth with accuracy.

Throughout history some people have sought ‘to get high’. Cigarettes, alcohol and caffeine are the most widely used and accepted drug-like substances in the world, but there are many more ‘drugs’ that are culturally ‘accepted’ in parts of America and Africa. Whether helping to unwind with friends or to wake up more quickly a number drugs will always be a part of human life and the dividing line between alcohol and marijuana, or caffeine and cocaine, seems to some rather arbitrary at times.

At the root of the problem is the morality of intoxication. It is difficult to establish at exactly what level of intoxication use might be deemed immoral, although where a drug renders the user incapable of socialising there is present, surely, an indication of ‘a few too many’. Physical side-effects are a consideration but these do not shed much light, if any, on intoxication, being ancillary to inebriation. Addiction and physical dependency are further indications of substance-abuse and of the danger inherent in consuming certain chemicals, but drug users are naturally inclined to separate these from the experience of getting high. After all, deeply ingrained bad habits may be just as disruptive and harmful as addictions. If I must have my cup of tea on getting home from work, and become very grumpy if I do not get it, have I not become ‘dependent’ on tea in just as I might be dependent on nicotine? Is it, then, morally wrong for me to become so dependent (if, indeed, that is what I am)?

The line has always been difficult to draw and it looks as if one man’s drink really is another’s poison. While law-makers may be able to legislate against very harmful or very addictive substances, it is difficult to see how so generic, and so blunt, an instrument can regulate behaviour effectively while also retaining a serious claim to moral authority. Indeed, morality has historically been most visibly upheld in the churches among institutions. Although lacking the coercive force of secular law churches and religious groups have historically been able to command no small degree of moral authority. In essence their message does not change, and they are in no hurry to provide reflex reactions to the latest crises that preoccupy governments. They can usually be found objecting to legislation they see as flawed rather than proposing the best ways to tackle issues like immigration or income inequality. Their more sedate approach, combined with practical, pastoral experience, naturally facilitates a more nuanced and humane approach to moral issues that avoids both overt authoritarianism and ‘liberal’ indifferentism.

In our secularised society it is perhaps naïve to hope for a stronger religion-rooted voice in affairs of state, one that will go far beyond seats for bishops in the House of Lords and occasional articles from religious leaders in the newspapers. It does appear, however, that, where drugs are concerned, there has been a modern moral failure to articulate clearly and effectively where the real roots of the problem are to be found. Even if we are to concede that de-criminalisation might go some way towards reduction of drug-trafficking and that licensing might clean up portions of a very dirty trade, it is merely fanciful to suggest that legalisation could ever be a genuine panacea for Britain’s, or indeed the world’s, drug problems. We must instead start looking at drug abuse as a question of morality. It is simply evasion to look upon it as a matter of straightforward legal and economic expediency.

This is emphatically not, however, simply a matter of democratic mandate. After all, a majority – whatever its mandate – has no right to tyrannise a minority. If it could be shown that homosexual couples really had a basic human right to marry, no democratic mandate against it could ever justify a government that pushed through a vote violating it.

Human rights, like morality, are not simply a matter of consensus. They entail also an appeal to a kind of ‘higher’ law. If advocates and opponents of gay marriage are to justify characterisation of this issue as one of rights they must recognise such a position requires appeal to a universal law that precedes legislation, one that is in some way embedded in human nature itself. In tandem with moral philosophers, theologians and serious thinkers they must make this ‘higher’ law intelligible to politicians, civil officials and the electorate at large so that legislation may be enacted in a coherent, rational and humane way.

Natural Law theory has long taken such an approach to morality. In the words of Prof. Robert George, ‘Natural Law begins with experience, but it does not stop or even tarry there’. It is intelligible to all because it draws on the experiences of all, beginning with observations of human beings and the natural world, and proceeding to give a rational account of how they relate and fit together. Crucially it takes the world and humans as they appear and makes no attempt to identify hidden motives that drive a person’s ‘true’ intentions. Nor does it privilege a person’s will over the body, the body over the mind, or the mind over the will. It takes us as whole and seeks to make connections between our faculties and characteristics intelligible, rational, sustainable and, ultimately, more fully human. Since its starting point is a universal conception of human nature it is possible for Natural Law to provide foundations for a universal morality and for the human rights that prevent tyranny by a majority over a minority.

To claim this is not to argue in general against democratic forms of government or popular consensus, but rationality, coherence and intelligibility are key components of any such theory and this makes it unresponsive to whims of fashion and passing sentiments.

While advocates of gay marriage have carefully portrayed theirs as a cause of basic rights – one justified even in the face of ‘bigotry’ and popular opposition – they have manifestly failed to link it to any comprehensive account of human nature. There has been, of course, some emphasis on love, property and society, but the biological and procreative elements have of necessity been played down. It remains to be seen how the House of Commons will react in the end to a conception of marriage that explicitly adopts unequal definitions of marital consummation and of infidelity in treating of heterosexual and homosexual couples.

For those who hold to a traditional conjugal definition of marriage this Bill is unintelligible. It requires that we adopt a notion of marriage that separates not only sex and procreation, but even love and the human body. It atomises the human person, and with it the institution of marriage. For all of David Cameron’s talk about how this Bill will help to build up society by strengthening marriage it is difficult to see how this could ever be the case.

Tarantino has repeatedly refused to discuss the wider significance of so bloody and violent a film even though it was released less than a month after the Newtown, Connecticut, shooting. He maintains that there is no relationship between depictions of violence in films and that happening in the real world, but refuses to be drawn on his reasons for so thinking.

In the case of another recent shooting at a showing of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado, the chief suspect James Egan Holmes appears to have taken a very different line. His apparent inability to distinguish reality from fiction seems to have strongly influenced his decision to kill twelve people and injure a further 58. On such a matter, Tarantino’s silence is regrettable.

Returning to Django Unchained, Tarantino has repeatedly spoken of his wish to portray nineteenth-century Mississippi accurately, even down to over a hundred, somewhat controversial uses of the ‘n-word’. In one interview the director declared his film to be about telling the truth. His reluctance to be drawn on the social implications of violent cinema is perhaps understandable.

He is by no means the first to advocate violence in the theatre. Antonin Artaud is one of the most significant twentieth-century figures to have employed a ‘theatre of cruelty’ to make his plays more ‘real’. ‘Without an element of cruelty at the root of every spectacle,’ he wrote, ‘the theatre is not possible… [I]t is through the skin that metaphysics must be made to re-enter our minds.’ For Artaud, cruelty was about truth and while he was not referring exclusively to cruel violence it is not hard to find correspondence between his ideas and films like Django Unchained.

Here is the nub of the issue. Violence in film seeks to create a visceral thrill – palpable and apparently real – but it is violence that ultimately serves a fictional end. However moving or gut-wrenching it remains fiction. Meanwhile, violence in the real world is rarely finessed as it is in a Hollywood studio. Even if well-choreographed and capable of moving a plot forwards it will always be incapable of communicating violence as it actually is.

It is tempting to assert that this doomed and violent quest for authenticity as articulated by Messrs. Artaud and Tarantino points up exactly what is wrong with theatrical and filmed violence. The failure of cinema to communicate the true reality and tragic experience of violence is just that of which we should disapprove. But the experience of the Aurora shooting suggests otherwise. The Dark Knight Rises, the most recent film in the Christopher Nolan Batman franchise, is anything but realistic. The cinematography is breathtaking, and iconic. Like the comic books upon which it is based, it presents Batman as an unstoppable force going it alone against the forces of crime and vice. As a result it mythologises violence, presenting it with an aura of mystique and romance. It is a simple and elegant myth – one into which it is easy to buy and by which one is readily enthralled. By contrast, Tarantino’s  violence may be aesthetically distasteful, even to the point of dark comedy, but he does leave viewers with no further appetite for blood and gore. While his attempt to ‘tell the truth’ may ultimately prove a failed quest it at least introduces a degree of ambiguity that strips decisive acts of violence of some of the magic that can be so tragically appealing.

1) Is Plato winning the argument?

‘[F]irst let’s step back and consider a broader question namely the widespread view that something has gone awry with the character of our politics and the way in which political questions are debated in America, Britain and other western democracies.’

2) Consign it to the flames

‘I know what economists are, but who are…‘social commentators’? What training and qualifications do you need to become one? Or is social commentator like community leader, an office which involves an element of self-election?

 [I]n practice ‘social commentators’ means retired politicians and civil servants, academics in the social sciences and I’m sorry to have to break it to you journalists.’

3) Not in my name

‘Not in my name is not just the rejection of a specific democratic decision but a rejection of that democracy’s right to make such a decision on your behalf. It’s a moment when moral disgust at what is being proposed overwhelms the sense of the need to obey the conventional rules of the game and…accept the verdict of the majority.

It shares some of the certainty and purism of the ‘values’ debates… in which practical considerations are put inside in favour of a simple, clear and effectively unchangeable position. What follows may well be a powerful individual or collective declaration of morality, but it is a declaration which is made by people who have already left the debating chamber.’

If the proposed drastic change in British marriage law is to have any firm conceptual and cultural footing it ought to be based on something stronger, and of more concrete public benefit, than a private, even if apparently profound, sentiment.

The onus must surely be on supporters of gay marriage to demonstrate the need for the proposed legal change and explain why manifest differences between heterosexual and homosexual couples are not an obstacle.

Celebrating a couple’s love is a natural part of family life but we do not need, nor have we ever needed, a government official to tell us to have a good time or to express our solidarity with the newly married. The State has an interest in marriage which gives birth to, and socialises, succeeding generations. A couple’s love is of interest to the State insofar as it produces, and contributes to the welfare of, children.

With children manifestly out of the equation, advocates of gay marriage have still to identify a public benefit in which the State has a genuine interest directly related to gay relationships.

That is not to say that the State has no interest at all in gay relationships. Disproportionate levels of substance abuse, sexual promiscuity and mental health problems in the gay community are ever better documented. Even the gay writer and actor David Hoyle has gone so far as to declare gay culture ‘the biggest suicide cult in history’.

For gay people recognition of marriage is about playing a role in normal society and no longer feeling ashamed of being sexually attracted to their own sex.

The State clearly should take an interest in the high levels of unhappiness among gay people which arguably lead to  disproportionate levels of substance abuse and the tragic cases of teen suicides. Extending the cover of ‘marriage’ to gay couples might, it could be thought, have a positive effect on this. But that begs questions politicians appear unwilling or unable to answer. Why have they not made the case for gay marriage on these grounds before? Is it right to instrumentalise so vital a social institution in this way? What are the risks and potential consequences of defining marriage in a manner that explicitly excludes children?

Insofar as marriage has a potential for making homosexual people feel less different or abnormal, we must recognise that it already plays an important role in supporting parents in caring for their children. This must not be underestimated.

The haste at which David Cameron’s coalition has moved on this issue is deeply worrying when the arguments are still not fully expressed or understood by either side of the debate.