I started writing this post while watching This Week again. This time they were talking, inevitably, about the new equal rights legislation (good legislation; from this government? Amazing.) The Catholic church is trying to have itself made exempt from the new law; and the Church of England has come out alongside it. Or at least John Sentamu has.

It looks like they’re going to be smacked down for now, which is good.

I was brought up as a Catholic, but I grew out of it, and am, like any sensible person, profoundly anti-religious now. And what I say to the Catholics who would try to destroy one of the few good, well-intentioned pieces of legislation that this government has brought in, is this:

We here in Britain are trying to build a tolerant, inclusive, multicultural society. If you can’t work within that, within the laws and regulations that govern adoption, then you shouldn’t be in the adoption business. And if you don’t like the way our society is developing, maybe you’d be happier elsewhere. I hear they’ve got quite a theocracy going in Iran.

Of course, there’s nothing to stop people saying the same to me, when I speak out against ID cards, for example. But that’s democracy for ya: full of contradictions.

And anyway, it could come to that yet.