IT'S A strange old world. In Northern Ireland, they have already enacted the law that forces Church-run adoption agencies to consider gay couples as prospective parents. There was no fuss and practically no media pick-up.

Then, when the same law is proposed for the rest of the UK, all hell breaks loose in Britain, and only then we begin to talk about it, and report on it, in this neck of the woods. Please explain.

What has happened in Britain this week is gigantically worrying for anyone for cares a fig about religious freedom, about limiting the scope of the State, and about child welfare.

What has happened is also entirely relevant to us here in Ireland, not only because this law already exists in Northern Ireland, but also because the militant tendency driving it forward is alive and kicking in Ireland and would dearly love to do here what has just happened in the UK.

Let's remind ourselves of what has taken place. A mainly unobjectionable law has been passed by the British parliament that bans discrimination against gays in the provisions of good and services.

One of those services is adoption. The Churches have been told that their adoption agencies cannot prefer heterosexual couples over homosexual couples and therefore must abide by the law, or lose all public funding and have no more children referred to them for placement. This would effectively close them.The Catholic Church, backed by the Church of England, asked for an opt-out from this section of the new law and after a fierce cabinet and political debate, the request was refused.

The debate unleashed torrents of anti-Catholic and anti-religious bigotry. One unnamed Labour minister, quoted in the London 'Times', said: "I'm not going to have some bloody reactionary German Pope dictate the law of our land."

Another said, only half-jokingly: "Never trust a Catholic."

A third thundered : "Where's all the child abuse and paedophilia? In the Catholic Church. They should get their own house in order and sort out the way paedophilia lies hidden." For your average Labour MP and his fellow travellers in Britain and Ireland, the issue is cut and dried.

In the matter of adoption, homosexuals should not be discriminated against. Discrimination is always wrong, an expression of bigotry, intolerance and prejudice, and that is that. This is a practically religious belief that they hold with fanatical intensity. They are as certain in their beliefs as Osama Bin Laden and feel they are morally entitled, nay, duty bound, to demolish all opposition. What dangerous nonsense.

For starters, the issue of adoption has nothing, repeat nothing, to do with adult rights or adult needs. It has all and everything to do with children, and nothing but children. It exists for them, and them alone. It exists to serve their best interests, and if it is deemed to be in their best interests to discriminate in favour of heterosexual couples, which is to say in favour of a man and woman, which is to say a mother and father, then that is completely and entirely justifiable.

The vital point is this; sometimes discrimination is rational and not an expression of prejudice. After all, would you let two ninety years olds, or two 10 year olds, adopt a child? One presumes not, although this would be discrimination on the grounds of age.

Of course, gay rights groups argue that two men or two women can parent a child just as well as a man and a woman. But that's a hard sell. Can it really be the case that mothers and fathers do not bring something unique to parenting? Is sexual complementarity an illusion? Can a man be a mother as easily as a woman can be a mother? Can a woman be a father as easily as a man can be a father? Try persuading mothers and fathers of that.

But here's another thing. . In Britain, the Church is constantly and rightly being told that it has no right to impose its will on the State. But Church/State separation also means the State has no right to impose its will on the Church, and that is precisely what's happening here. The State should only be allowed to force its will on the Church when the common good is clearly at stake.

On this issue, that is not the case and therefore the State has absolutely no right to force the Churches to compromise their ethos.

On this issue, the State is completely over-reaching itself. What we are dealing with here is State-imposed, politically correct morality, and it is making Britain a cold house for Catholics and religious believers generally.

Email: dquinn@iol.ie