Domestic abuse is an odious crime which certainly calls for investigation and redress. However, there’s an aspect of this form of assault which our politically correct world doesn’t choose to admit: that is – a man hitting a woman is not the same as a woman hitting a man.

The natural law has been erased from our moral compass in the name of “equality”. The natural law recognises the obvious: in general, men are physically bigger and stronger than women, and in most physical conflicts between males and females, the male has the greater advantage. Therefore when a man assaults a woman, it has historically been seen as a more grievous act than when a woman strikes a man.

But the orthodoxy of gender equality seeks to change that: a woman hitting a man now amounts to the same, in law, as a man hitting a woman.

The death of Caroline Flack, the 40-year-old television presenter, is a tragic suicide. It has emerged that she took her life because she faced a trial for hitting her boyfriend, which she believed would be a “show trial” undertaken by the Crown Prosecution Service. The well-known defence lawyer Nick Freeman has supported this view, telling the Daily Telegraph: “The CPS are not immune to a high-profile scalp and tragically in this case that is exactly what they have got.”

There was evidence that Ms Flack did have a spat with her boyfriend which drew blood. Yet her boyfriend, Lewis Burton, had subsequently withdrawn his complaint and didn’t want Caroline prosecuted. He is now “heartbroken”.

A trial may proceed even if a complainant changes their mind, because the CPS is supposed to act in the public interest. But there must be many questions over whether they did so in this case.

Dr Charlotte Proudman, a human rights lawyer, says she is baffled as to why they planned to proceed with the trial when there were also mental health issues involved. Caroline Flack had problems with depression and panic attacks.

Hostile activity on social media can’t have helped. Like many celebrities, she was subjected to unpleasant and unkind criticism. But it was the prospect of a trial for domestic abuse that reportedly pushed her into despair.

In the past domestic abuse was called “wife-beating”, precisely because that’s what it usually was. Yes, women can also be nasty: there are female homicides who poison, shoot and knife their victims. But in spousal rows it is far more common for women to use the lash of their tongue, or the insidious stiletto of nagging, than brute force or violent assault. Applying the law on rigidly neutral grounds of “gender equality” ignores biological reality.

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The first hymn at our local 9am Mass last Sunday was the terrific Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer (Bread of Heaven), and I thought how I’d love it sung at my funeral. So uplifting, hopeful, poetic – “Open now the crystal fountain/ Whence the healing steam doth flow” – and a great tune. And isn’t it nice that Catholics are now using traditionally Protestant hymns?

Thereafter our priest delivered a jeremiad against Boris Johnson’s administration, which he judges to be too rich – notably Rishi Sunak, the new Chancellor, known in Yorkshire as “the Maharajah of the Dales”. Mr Sunak is married to one of India’s wealthiest heiresses, Akshata Murthy. The priest asked: “How can these rich politicians know about the lives of the struggling?”

Fair question. Yet a more positive spin could be applied to the new Conservative Cabinet: it’s fascinating to see more politicians of Asian heritage now achieving high office. There is the aforementioned Rishi Sunak; the new Attorney General, Suella Braverman, a brainy young lawyer from a part-Goan family (née Fernandes); Alok Sharma, Business Secretary, who was born in Uttar Pradesh, India, and grew up in Reading; and still at the Home Office, we have the fierce tough-on-crime Priti Patel, from a Ugandan-Asian family.

In terms of ethnicity, this surely demonstrates diversity at the top.

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A new book, The Battle for Christian Britain by Callum G Brown, notes that Norman St John Stevas, “moral broker for Conservative Christians”, formed a civil partnership with his gay companion before he died.

So what? Many such arrangements before death are undertaken for inheritance reasons. Lord St John of Fawsley still wrote the best book explaining Humanae Vitae – his brilliant opus On Human Life.

Follow Mary Kenny on Twitter: @MaryKenny4 

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