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A commission reporting to the French National Assembly (Parliament) has returned the most coherent and intellectually formidable negative response to the advocates of "gay marriage" - (in French): http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/12/dossiers/mission_famille_enfants.asp. This is frankly astonishing, in view of the French tendency to PC attitudes and Chirac's hostility to anything that reeks of Christianity, but it shows that unless you pack your commission with journalists, activists and politicians, certain problems arise by themselves.

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Yep, that was weird stuff. I mean, one doesn't need to be a Christian to admit Christian roots of present European civilization.
On the other hand the preamble are seen as a source for interpretation in borderline cases, so that's was probably the reason.

We should therefore take our legal interpretations from Voltaire (who supported absolute monarchy) and the Baron d'Holbach (who was an atheist and a determinist)? I'll take Aquinas myself. The Enlightenment is not only overrated, it is the source of some of the worst intellectual crimes of succeeding ages. But I do not believe that Chirac was even very clear on the contents of what he was pushing on Europe: all that mattered was that Enlightenment had its centre in France, and therefore raised its status in Europe.

all that mattered was that Enlightenment had its centre in France, and therefore raised its status in Europe.
He always appeared to me as a pompus prick, whatever other qualities he may have.

What about a Jewish European, a Buddhist European or a Muslim European? Should they have to choose Aquinas too? I don't say about Voltaire and d'Holbach, but a Constitution is supposed to be valid for all European citizens, and talking about any roots, religious or not, would be making it about ten times longer than it is and still lead to people being left out.
I can't say I know d'Holbach at all, but can't his atheism and determinism be cancelled out by the fact that Voltaire was neither? And that, if d'Holbach was not a supporter of absolute monarchy, can it cancel out the fact that Voltaire had to eat and save his neck, too?
The Enlightenment is not only overrated, it is the source of some of the worst intellectual crimes of succeeding ages.
Christianity, on the other hand, led to perfect intellectual peace, especially when the Inquisition kicked in. I can totally see your point.

The Inquisition, historically speaking, was the product of a violent assault upon the Catholic Church. (I do not know what you were taught about the Albigensians, but the famous Albigensian crusade began when the Albigensians, having lost some public debates against Catholic envoys, decided to murder them in the street.) It continued for the same reason. What is more, the Inquisition as you imagine it never existed. It is an invention of persecuting British and Dutch writers. I suggest you read some Kamen to find out what the real thing actually was; and, incidentally, that you find out what was done to Catholics in England and Scotland, which made the worst of the real Inquisition something meek and mild. Understand this: that the Albigensian revolt first, the Hussite one afterwards, and the Protestant one after that, were not mild and kindly movements of opinion, but violent efforts to dispossess and expel the Catholic Church, plunder its possessions and outlaw its doctrines. They were led not by churchmen, but by greedy politicians and kings, and achieved their goals by mob violence and, when that failed, military aggression. Find out how Protestantism was imposed on Norway and England, and how it failed to be imposed on Ireland, in spite of laws that would have made Hitler sick.

As for your silliness about Aquinas, you evidently do not know that we are speaking about a man who was first and foremost the greatest philosopher who ever lived, and who any intellectually honest Buddhist or Jew would be proud to study. The method of Aquinas was to question everything. That of Voltaire was to mock whatever he did not happen to like. One of the two was an honest man; the other was chased out of one kingdom after another because he took advantage of his reputation as a philosopher to set up as a smuggler. It was his friend and fellow intellectual Frederick II of Prussia who called him "the greatest scoundrel alive".

Well put.

In Toronto I attended a public lecture at the Oratory about the history of the Inquisition. It was an enlightenment for me, whose history lessons concentrated on the history of the UK (with an Anglican bias, at that) to hear a well-delivered, clearly well-researched delivery of this that neither put a glossy, rosy glaze on it nor painted the Church as the monster that popular opinion would have us believe.

Something needs to be done about history education where I came from.

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