Here's to you Mrs Robinson

Here’s to you Mrs Robinson

Irene Robinson, the wife of the first minister in the six counties, is on record as saying the state should enact God’s Law. She made this comment in a debate about abortion. From utterances such as these Mrs Robinson comes across as a political extremist so far to the extreme right that if she moves one step further in that direction she will fall off planet earth.

Mrs Robinson doesn’t seem to realise that the political norm nowadays is secularism. To keep the matter clear and free from a personal viewpoint I have taken the following definition of secularism from the Internet.

Secularism in its current usage is usually defined in two ways: -

(1) Secularism in one sense asserts freedom of religion and freedom from government imposition of religion upon a people within a state. The state should be neutral on matters of belief and give no state privileges or subsidies to religion.
(2) Secularism in another sense refers to a belief that human activities and decisions, especially political ones, should be based on what is considered to be evidence and fact rather than on religious influence dealing with religious based dogma and absolute truth or Devine law.
(3) Secular law is based upon reasonableness, which was developed during the age of enlightenment. Secularists believe that all activities falling outside the private sphere, should be secular not religious.

When this definition is examined closely it will be found that the state may not impose religious belief upon a people. The state should be neutral on matters of religious belief. Secularism in the sense given is now the mainstay of modern democracies throughout the world but this has still to sink into the backwaters of the six counties especially in the D.U.P.

The debate in which Mrs Robinson made the outburst was about abortion. Does this mean then that an acceptance of abortion goes hand and glove with secularism? It is true that most Christian Churches oppose abortion as immoral and criminal but is abortion on demand and for social expediency acceptable in principle to all secularists? Secularists hold that state laws should be derived from reason and be based on evidence and fact. While an unwanted pregnancy is clearly a human problem reason can say that legal abortion, as a solution to a human problem, is inhumane. The facts and evidence of the act of abortion indicates clearly that the act of abortion is neither good for the mother or for the life form in the womb. If secularism is consistent on abortion it should hold that in a secular state the only acceptable solutions to human problems are humane solutions and should set about the task of finding and implanting humane solution for human problems. Reason evidence and fact point in that direction.

So while secularists can support Mrs Robinson’s opposition to abortion, God’s Law on the matter won’t do. Christians hold that God’s Law is based upon the Ten Commandments but such laws should only inform private conscience, private behaviour, and the private lives of Christians and cannot be imposed on non-Christians and non-believers in the state. Lets bring the 21st century into the six counties and in so doing say – Here’s to you Mrs Robinson: welcome to secularism and the 21st century.

Michael Gillespie Federal Unionist – Early Sinn Fein