Never mind the evidence!

I think it was the evangelist of a previous generation, David Watson, who told of presenting the case for Christ at a university to find a student responding aggressively: ‘I know what I believe. Don’t confuse me with the facts!’

But that same attitude is becoming increasingly commonplace in our public life. At the beginning of March, Prime Minister in waiting, Gordon Brown, again ruled out tax breaks to encourage marriage. Earlier the Education Secretary Alan Johnson gave a speech in which he was reported as ‘attacking marriage’, saying that children can be brought up just as effectively by single mothers. Now, whereas individual cases might happily buck the trend, the clear evidence of all the research is that ‘children of two-parent families just do a lot better on every measurement than those from single parent or step-families’ (Robert Whelan, Civitas).

Then again, back in January, the British Medical Journal published a fine editorial by Dr. Trevor Stammers which explained that, despite increasing provision for sex education, teenage sexual health in the UK is in overall decline, with increasing rates of abortions and sexually-transmitted diseases in under 18s. He explained that research showed that encouraging youngsters to delay first intercourse is a key to improving the situation. However, guess what? The Govern-ment continues to tell us that the answer lies in earlier sex education and the promotion of ‘safe sex’, (BMJ, January 20 2007, vol.334). According to some GP friends, a similar ignoring of medical implications of homosexual acts relates to the introduction of SORs this month.