But it's pertinent that he is an Anglican clergyman and sometime academic.

Needless to say, he was writing in the Globe and Mail, a journal which frequently opens its pages to people similarly afflicted, though rarely as severely as this poor man.

He was writing on the gay marriage issue, and he wanted the world to know that, even though he is "a church-going, Bible-reading, creed- affirming Christian," he is whole-heartedly in favour of gay marriage.

All through his life this man has watched the advance of the "common good," he writes.

Things like the decriminalization of contraception back in the '20s, the legalization of Sunday sports in the '40s, the easing of the divorce laws in the '60s, the legalization of abortion in the '70s, and now with the new century, the crowning achievement, the legalization of gay marriage.

"Canadians have learned to live with successive changes in lifestyle, each one feared as the first step on a slippery slope," he writes. "Yet we have remained a peaceable kingdom... Laws in a pluralistic society must embrace everyone. This country is a better place to live for all of us when we acknowledge we can be different without fighting about it. Or repressing it."

Now the fascinating aspect of all this is that while the man knows that great changes have occurred in our society, he does not realize that equally great changes have also occurred within himself.

He does not reflect that if anyone had told him during the days of the Sunday sports controversy that one day he would be fervidly approving of abortion on demand, he would have considered the suggestion absurd.

And if anyone had mentioned to him when he was enthusiastically endorsing abortion on demand that one day he would with equal zeal be approving of sodomy as the sexual basis of a marriage, he would have dismissed the idea as preposterous.

Similarly, if anyone today suggested that 20 years hence, he would be avidly endorsing pedophilia and polygamy, he would respond with the same shock and horror.

But he would be there all right, eagerly affirming that "laws in a pluralistic society must embrace everyone."

Not only is this clergyman unaware of the changes within himself, neither does he suspect that these radical revisions in his views didn't just happen. They were caused. Such is his piteous state.

Caused by whom or what, one asks.

Caused by the media.

Caused by the new fashions in academe.

Caused by the education establishment.

Caused by the "spirit of the age."

Caused by the ancient human quest to somehow escape the demands of conscience and morality.

We are "free," we proclaim, not realizing we have become more thoroughly enslaved than almost any previous generation.

We can be manipulated, fashioned, shaped, moulded.

Put the right spin on some new "freedom," support it with editorials and columns in the "authoritative" newspapers, furnish it with the respected academic credentials, let the judges loose on it, and in 30 years you could have a man like this swinging from the trees with a banana in his mouth, all the while gibbering: "This country is a better place to live for all of us, when we acknowledge we can be different."

What, I wonder, is the basis of this thing he calls "the common good?"

Where does it come from? What is its authority?

Is it merely whatever the majority favours?

If the majority approve of, say, slavery, does that mean slavery must serve the common good?

Why is it that sodomy was considered criminally evil 40 years ago and is now so sacrosanct that to even criticize it is to risk prosecution?

Those are big questions.

The trouble is that long ago this unfortunate man quit asking them.

END