…The words of the Psalmist came into my head today as I read the headlines. The psalmist promises that, with the Lord as our shepherd, we need not fear…Today our country walked into the valley of the shadow of death. Parliament has voted that a family does not consist of a mother and father who transmit life to their children. It banned any statement that a family needs a father, and agreed that two lesbians who want a child can decide to have one using artificial means. It rejected calls to tighten up the abortion law even after hearing the descriptions of how children are dismembered as small perfectly-formed babies at 22 weeks. It passed legislation which treats a human person as something that can be used for a utilitarian purpose.If some one, in whatever civilisation replaces ours, writes about these days, those who passed this legislation will be treated with savagery. The evil that will result from what Parliament has now permitted is clear enough even at this stage – but it will generate more evil, and terrible things will be done.No civilisation has ever survived, let alone prospered, when it failed to understand that human beings are at the heart of it all, that human existence has a value. Nor can any civilisation work that is based on a lie: and everyone knows that it is a lie to pretend that human life is not generated through the union of a man and a woman, and that this creates a family.