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03-28-2009, 01:51 AM | #1 |
Avalon Senior Member
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: U.K.
Posts: 3,380
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Royal Family will have sex equality - but not yet
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle5989648.ece
Philip Webster and Ruth Gledhill Moves to end discrimination against Roman Catholics and women in the succession to the throne will proceed even though the Government blocked legislation yesterday that proposed the change. Talks with Buckingham Palace on the issue will continue and Gordon Brown will ask the opinions of Commonwealth leaders who recognise the Queen as their head of state at a summit in November. But the prospect of any change in the present Parliament or even under the present monarch are slim, constitutional experts say. Mr Brown has disclosed that he has already opened talks with the Palace but emphasised that there were no “easy answers” to changing the 1701 Act of Settlement. Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, told the Commons that a Bill introduced by the Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris was not the appropriate vehicle for change of this scale. He said that the chances of a Bill before the next election were “very limited”. Related Links COMMENT: 300-year-old argument rumbles on Labour feared backlash over anti-Catholic reform Catholic tremor through Westminster He was still speaking when time ran out in yesterday's sitting at 2.30pm, meaning that Dr Harris's Royal Marriages and Succession to the Crown (Prevention of Discrimination) Bill stands no chance of making progress. The Bill, which had all-party support, would have ended the centuries-old ban on Catholics marrying the monarch and the rule of primogeniture, under which a woman in the line of succession is automatically superseded by a younger male sibling. Dr Harris said that it was “not acceptable in this day and age” that the Princess Royal was lower down the line of succession than her younger brothers. The bar on Catholics marrying into the Royal Family was “offensive” and an “antediluvian measure”. Mr Brown, in a round of broadcast interviews during his pre-G20 travels, said: “This is a very complex issue that has been a matter of controversy and discussion for decades, indeed over centuries.” Henry Bellingham, the Shadow Justice Minister, accused the Prime Minister of seeking easy headlines by hijacking Dr Harris's Bill to divert attention from his visit to South America, which had gone “badly wrong”. Earlier, the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, said that the ban on Catholics marrying into the Royal Family would disappear. He told Catholic MPs and peers at the Commons that the abolition of the 1701 Act would happen “in good time” but he did not consider it an immediate problem and Catholics did not want to “make a fuss”. The Archbishop added: “I do feel it is discriminatory, no doubt about it. The heir to the throne can marry anyone he likes – a Jew, a Hottentot, a Muslim – but not a Roman Catholic.” Church of England bishops, of whom there are 26 in the House of Lords, oppose any such moves towards disestablishment. The Bishop of Winchester, the Right Rev Michael Scott-Joynt, said in a recent lecture: “A Roman Catholic marriage would be likely to produce, a generation on, a Roman Catholic monarch who could not, as things are, formally recognise the Church of Scotland, or the Church of England.” http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...n-1656037.html |
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