It must have been mightily crowded last week: standing room only, up there on the higher moral ground, crammed with the bristling self-righteous who prefer, as they always put it, to “opt out” rather than to compromise a “principle”.

Already there, of course, were the devout medical students who opted out of lessons in sinful sexually transmitted diseases, the stalwarts of the Roman Catholic agencies who preferred to opt out of adoption altogether rather than obey the law on gay adoption, as well as the Muslims who recently threatened to opt out of their supermarket jobs rather than stack a shelf with liquor.

Now, jostling for position, comes the JP who is fighting for the right to opt out of family cases that might involve same-sex adoption, the conscience-smitten family doctors who wish to opt out of the entire “process” of abortion – including even referring a patient to a doctor of different stripe – and the sanctimonious couple who have fostered 28 children but are opting out because they have been told they are legally bound to let children think that homosexuals are OK people too.

The couple explain that they cannot tell children what they believe to be “against the word of God” – the corollary of which, presumably, is that they can preach, to the most disturbed of our children, their interpretation of what is pro the word of God.

The whole trend is, frankly, social sense stood on its head. Such is our growing timidity of causing offence in the face of the doctrines of minorities that all anybody has to do is to invoke “morality”, “deity” or “principle” for it to appear that it is they who are pristine of spirit and the rest of us who occupy a lower dimension.

In fact, it is the majority, not the minority, who should be pro-active: less of the headline-grabbing opting out by zealots and more of the pre-emptive weeding or kicking them out before they are given a politically strategic shot at that halo.

It is not rude but reasonable that before anybody is employed – or before huge investment in their training – they be asked whether they have any “principles” that might interfere with the full completion of their contracted duties. And no pussy-footing: if the answer is yes, then weed them out; if a “no” proves to be a lie, or if “principles” are subsequently embraced, then kick them out.

The higher moral ground, in a democracy, belongs to consensus drawn from the values of the majority and implemented by the flawed beast that is the law. Those who would exempt themselves from it, no matter how enjoyable the fleeting fame of their martyrdom, deserve no more endorsement or admiration than any other petty delinquent.

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