Is the United Kingdom a legitimate state? I should argue that it is not, since 17th July 2013. This was the day when the queen gave royal assent to the ‘Same-Sex Marriage Bill’. This act of parliament is in fact, even if not in the explicit intention of all the legislators, a rejection of the very notion of marriage and therefore of the family. They have denied not just a property of marriage, as happened with the introduction of divorce, but the very essence of marriage. They have replaced marriage by something else which is not marriage – since it can be entered into by two people of the same sex – while keeping the name of marriage. It is exactly as if the local council were to send round a man with a bull-dozer to knock down your house and replace it with a full-size cardboard model of a house, and then tell you that it was the same thing.
They have rejected marriage. In rejecting marriage they have also rejected the family, since the family is marriage with its fruitfulness.
But “the family is the original cell (cellula) of social life” (CCC 2207). I take this to mean that according to natural law, the family is both anterior in its rights to society and the place in which a child is trained to live in society.
So those who claim power over the land mass of Great Britain and northern Ireland have rejected the very institution in which the State is rooted and by which it endures. It is as if a bishop were to deny the existence of baptism; or as if a doctor were to deny that nature and art have any power to heal; or as if a professor were to deny that the young can learn or remember truth. Or since by ancient metaphor we speak of the ship of State, it as if a pilot were to deny that men can build a craft able to carry them over the waves.
What should we naturally say in such cases? I think we should say, not that the bishop was necessarily deposed from his see, the professor from his chair, or the doctor or pilot from their guild; this would seem to be the task of some higher authority to accomplish; but rather, that they no longer had the right actually to govern those hitherto subject to their authority. The bishop who denied baptism would have no right to move his presbyters from place to place; the doctor who denied that sickness can be healed would have no right to order his apprentices to serve him; the professor would have no right to be listened to with attention while he lectured; the pilot could no longer legitimately command his crew. For after the depositions had duly taken place, no one would blame the priests, apprentices, students and sailors for ignoring the bidding of their former superiors.
Likewise those who deny the family, and enforce this denial by the policeman and the gaol, have no right to govern any men and women among whom they live. Elizabeth II may still be the queen, David Cameron her prime minister, and members of parliament still members of parliament (for the pope has not deposed them) but they have no right to legislate or govern. That is what I mean by saying that the United Kingdom has not been a legitimate state for two years, one month and six days.
Laodicea 
August 23, 2015 at 10:11 pm
Interesting thoughts. I have a question: What would be the consequence of this? I mean, what does follow from the fact that a state looses its legitimacy? If it does; I must admit that I don’t absolutely agree with you, but that is really not my point here. Does it mean we would not be under the obligation any more to follow this state’s laws? (Or only the laws that came into effect after July 2013?) Or would we, from a moral point of view, be allowed to start a revolution now?
And: What other things would result in a state’s loosing its legitimacy? (Is a dictatorship illegitimate?)
August 24, 2015 at 3:59 am
Is there not something questionable in the very idea of a legitimate non-Catholic state? ‘Kingdoms without justice are but criminal gangs’ and ‘there is no justice save in that republic whose founder and ruler is Christ’. I appreciate the distinction you have tried to impress upon me before between a person who, having lost habitual grace, submits himself once more to the law but lacks the grace of absolution and a person who remains in open rebellion of will, intellect or both against God’s law. I can see that this distinction might be applied to a state as well as an individual. I can see one might have put the USA in such a category at moments in its history. But I do not see how it can apply here. The three kingdoms of which the United Kingdom is composed are ex-Catholic states. They were not seeking to restore God’s law even before this point. They have been willing instruments of the prince of this world for five centuries. On the other hand it is clear that the temporal power is a necessity of human nature and we are bound to submit to it in all matters other than sin even when it is not legitimate (i.e. not part of the Church). Is it this which is forfeited by the enaction of sodomariage? The empire of Montezuma was legitimately destroyed by Spain because it formally endorsed idolatry, sodomy, cannibalism and human sacrifice. At this point the obligation to submit to the powers that be binds only as a matter of prudence not justice. If one had the power to overthrow that power and restore nature one would be free to do so. This would seem to be true of a Communist regime that formally denies the existence of private property. Could it not also be true of a regime that formally denies the existence of the family?
August 24, 2015 at 8:29 pm
{To Magdalena} The best I can do at the moment is to say that a state is illegitimate when by its laws and constitutions it is gravely contrary to the natural good of man (all non-Catholic states must be to some degree contrary to this natural good, but are not necessarily gravely contrary to it.) I don’t think a dictatorship is per se illegitimate, if we mean by that a state without elections where all major appointments emanate from the ruler.