In fact, to speak about the question in these terms is not strictly accurate. Those campaigning for the measure, their supporters, the international LGBT community, celebrities in the form of actors and pop singers etc, all these spoke about gay marriage being legalized in Ireland. But this is an inaccurate description, conveying a tiny part of what happened. In fact, what we did in Ireland was that we changed the core definition of family, arising from marriage, to confer the same legal and constitutional entitlements on a couple comprising two men or two women as hitherto were extended to a man and a woman on marriage. This is the most radical form of ‘gay marriage’ imaginable. The result is that the constitutional protections which previously applied to families – parents and children – based on marriage and biology, not longer obtain. There is now no constitutional value in biological connection, or in the complementarity of the sexes, or in the meaning of the conjugal act.
One of the problems was that many of those who voted for the amendment did not know any of this, did not wish to know it, or did not care. This is an unfortunate aspect of the political attitude of young people now: they find details boring. They do not care to hear things that might interfere with their desire to express what they regard as a ‘cool’ sentiment. So, we now have a Constitution that is no longer fit for purpose in as far as protecting families and parent-child relationships – either from the consequences of family breakdown and from encroachment by the state. But most people don’t know about this, and those who do are not listened to. We will therefore have a very strange hiatus before the consequences begin to reveal themselves. Then, I suppose, there will be some kind of backlash, but it is difficult to predict when this will occur.
You came to Italy several times, as on March 4, when you spoke to the Chamber of Deputies, that idea you've had the Italian situation?
I have been to Italy hundreds of times over the past decade or so. My understanding of the Italian situation is that it is – so far – much less serious than ours. In fact, Italy appears to have recently introduced a measure which seems very similar to the one we in Ireland introduced in 2010 – civil unions for gay couples but with no right to adopt – but which was immediately rejected as inadequate by the LGBT lobby. I predicted in Rome that, eventually, the same thing will happen in Italy as happened in Ireland: they will look for the maximum level of what they call ‘equality’. I don’t think people in Italy appreciate this. Certainly, many people I have met within the Catholic Church there appear to have no idea that this is the agenda. They accept the sob stories that this is all about the ‘right’ of gay people to have legally recognized relationships, and therefore to 'be happy'. Of course this is a smokescreen: at the back of all this is a determined ideological movement, which seeks to change completely the nature of human reality. It will go on until everything is demolished.
The anthropological revolution which we are seeing and its claims incarnate in new rights contain the risk of a new form of totalitarianism that bursts in Western societies?
Of course. What you find with what is called the ‘liberal agenda’ is that the same categories of activist happen to be involved in a range of different but related issues which are loosely categorized as ‘freedom; issues: abortion, gay marriage, surrogacy, etc. The gay marriage campaigns are simply one element of a much larger picture, which is essentially about changing the very nature and meaning of concepts like ‘family’ and ‘parenthood’. The ideas underpinning the LGBT movement go back to the Frankfurt School in Germany in the 1920s. Later this group moved to New York, to Columbia University, where from the 1930s onwards they began the process of infiltrating the entirely American university system with a new form of Marxism – Cultural Marxism – designed to create a new kind of ‘dictatorship’ to inherit the historical role which had in effect been spurned by the proletariat. This is really the dictatorship of the ‘victims’, and is designed to promote the grievances of anyone who is not part of the alleged patriarchal hegemony which is supposed to have suppressed the rights of minorities in Europe and America, and which now stands to be overthrown. In fact, by this definition, the only category of human being not included among these 'victims' is the straight, adult, while male, who is ultimately the enemy of Cultural Marxism, but – again – most men who are likely to be affected are completely unaware of this.
These ideas now permeate the media of the West, and are slowing seeping into its political systems. Economic Marxism having been adjudged a failure, the Frankfurt School sought to reinvent Marxism as a cultural weapon directed at norms in human relationships, family and parenting. In a sense, gay marriage is no more than a battering ram which is being used to demolish the normative models and understandings. The longterm objective is to transfer the role of the cure parent from actual parents to the state, which would then be enabled to reallocate children to different adults more or less at will, the ultimate purpose being total control of the human person. If this sounds implausible, I would simply ask people to reflect on when they started to think of gay marriage as a self-evident ‘human’ or ‘civil’ right. Or look at their favorite ‘liberal’ newspaper and run a check on when it started to carry articles about gay marriage. Most people will be very surprised at the outcome of such an investigation. They will find that almost nobody talked about these questions until about six or seven years ago, that most Western politicians dismissed the idea of gay marriage as ridiculous until the last three or four years, and that none of the media organizations currently behaving as if they had championed these 'rights' for decades – if not centuries – carried as much as an editorial advocating gay marriage until about three or four years ago.
It is not an exaggeration to call this totalitarianism. The methodologies, as I explained in my talk in Rome, are profoundly totalitarian, because they rely on propaganda, demonisation, scapegoating of potential dissenters, corruption of media and politics, the mangling of everyday concepts and words, and so forth. All these weapons are being directed at the reinvention of human anthropology, in the guise of ‘equality’. In fact, you only have to consider the question for a short time before you realise that the ‘equality’ being offered amounts to a reduction of the rights and protections currently extended to normative families and natural parent/child relationships. It does, in fact, amount to ‘equality’ – but 'equality' at a much lower level than before for those in what will soon become known as ‘opposite-sex marriages’. It is like proposing that we cut off one healthy leg from every human person who has two, so that they can become 'equal' with a one-legged man. The rights of what we call 'traditional' marriages, will become diluted and reduced, and will find themselves at a new level alongside the new rights of ‘same-sex families’, i.e. at a much lower level than before. This is such an obvious point that it seems bizarre that it has not been understood in any of the societies which have so far accepted gay marriage, but this is a tribute to – precisely – the totalitarian power of the protagonist movement and its message.
What can we do to stop this threat? A pro family movement of people can be a solution?
The only way to stop it is to define it accurately and then to speak about it courageously. This movement for Cultural Marxism is accompanied by the most insidious and ugly tendencies towards bullying, demonizing and scapegoating that we have witnessed in peacetime Europe. Those in power either throw their lot in with the bullies – because it suits their broader agenda of stripping rights away from families – or hide away. The Catholic Church, since the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, has been extremely ambivalent – at best – sending out messages which are ambiguous and confusing. The result is that there is no longer any effective way for the danger to be highlighted, articulated and warned against. I think a movement of some kind is essential, but it cannot take any of the traditional forms. The term ‘pro-family’ is inadequate to the moment. In the first place, it has connotations of previous concerns, to do with, for example, divorce, which, though itself part of the agenda of Cultural Marxism, ultimately became a threat that emanated from within the family, and therefore, in a sense, nullified the concept of ‘family’ in those contexts where the threat manifested itself. Divorce seemed, in other words, to be a matter of choice coming from one or both parents, i.e. ostensibly from within the family. Therefore, to pledge allegiance to ‘the family’ in those circumstances seemed to be meaningless, since at least one of the members/parents was opting to leave. This made it appear that 'pro-family' ideas were simply a front for interference from outside – on religious or ideological grounds.
The present situation is quite different, and requires different responses. What is being attempted is an attack on the human family, the whole of it, through the conventional nuclear 'family' which is the molecule of human civilisation. In this sense, we speak of 'family' as coterminous with 'species'. Even if some or many members of that family cannot see the issue, this is still true. The same was true for divorce, of course, but here there is less capacity for confusion, provided enough people speak out with sufficient clarity and courage. We have been sold the lie that nothing is at stake in gay marriage – that it is a win-win. We are told repeatedly that 'family rights' and marriage do not amount to 'a zero-sum'game'. But it is, in fact, a zero-sum game, because the 'rights' being extended to gay couples result from the scaling down of the rights and protections of normative families that I have described.
What stands to be defended, therefore, is the very integrity of the human species, the core significance of biology and genetics, the right of parents to decide for their own children. The attack of Cultural Marxism is made on the human being, via the family, the molecule of civilisation. The resistance therefore needs to express itself in these terms, rather than in terms which can easily be dismissed as ‘traditionalist’ or ‘religious’. This is an anthropological battle. The only way of combating these tendencies is gradually to make people aware of the processes and mechanisms whereby they are drawn into the trance of unreason, in which they agree to things which give away the ground they are standing on, or on which they might hope their children might one day stand. For this we require leadership, and before this can emerge we need to deprogramme many of our existing leaders, including religious leaders, who have themselves fallen prey to the propaganda.
Propaganda operates on the mob, and on that part of each individual which sees itself as belonging to some mob or herd. A mob has a psychology of its own, and this is increasingly what drives public discussions and their consequences in policy and law. Propaganda seems to work as effectively on the intelligent as on the simple. We need to become aware of everything that it happening and watch its operation on our own minds and thoughts, and then find ways of reversing the effects on ourselves and others. We need to make all these factors visible and broadly understood, notwithstanding their complexity. Given that the media have already been corrupted, this is an uphill task. But it would be a good start if some of our leaders stopped using the media to protect their own backs, apologising for ideas which they are pledged by their oaths and cloths to uphold, giving vent to their own confused thinking-out-loud, which renders ordinary people more susceptible to the operation of the ideology and its propaganda. In my view, if people are not prepared to delve deeply into these questions, discovering everything that is to be discovered and speaking unapologetically about their observations, we would all be better off if they did not speak at all.
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