David Cameron should choose “masterly inactivity” over plans to introduce gay marriage, the Archbishop of York urged.
Dr John Sentamu said that he believed in civil partnerships but that they were not the same as marriage and people were failing to address that.
“There is a difference between civil partnerships and marriage,” he said. “That difference does not mean one is better than another.”
On the BBC’s Andrew Marr show, Sentamu actually made the interesting point that the government easily cannot change the definition of marriage without revoking the definition it has in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which is in force by Act of Parliament…. There was also a surprising Daily Telegraph poll over the weekend suggesting that while there is widespread UK support for civil partnerships, 70% oppose gay marriage.
This is a coalition government which is losing the plot and losing control of their own political parties. At the Liberal Democrat conference, the party just voted against the health legislation Nick Clegg and the party MPs are backing. Meanwhile the Conservative part of the Government are doing their best to lose their traditional voters apparently in order to ‘detoxify’ the party with voters.
Firstly there has been David Cameron’s gay marriage proposal – a consultation is opening with the result predetermined as far as he is concerned as Archbishop Sentamu points out.
Secondly he is now responsible for a determination that the government will fight the case in Europe that Christians may not have the right to wear crosses at work which the Archbishop of York has also spoken out against.
Two small fights, in the scheme of things, but two things which are removing the voter support he relies upon, without bringing in new supporters for whom on these policies, the Conservatives will not be the first choice. As Cranmer said today there is madness in trying to detoxify a party by retoxifying it on another issue.
Meanwhile the Coalition for Marriate Petition is up to 165,000 signatures today with no sign of slowing down.
People are asking why is the government fiddling about with peripheral issues unnecessarily antagonising their own voters when the mandate they have is strictly to deal with the economic problems of the country and to restore our economy, something where, with Brazil just passing our economy in size as the world’s sixth largest economy, there is no sign of improvement – indeed we have a generation lost to huge youth unemployment. Instead the coalition is talking of driving away our huge overseas banking sector in London with punitive personal taxation.
Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.