This debate is not about the dignity and rights of gay and lesbian people, who already have the benefits of marriage through civil partnerships, but about a change in the definition of marriage for everyone.
Read it all (subscription required) and there is also a a Telegraph article about this there.
Yes, indeed. The squeals from Nick Herbert and others lambasting anyone who disagrees with them are very bigotted and unfair.
How easily the Cameron crowd are forgetting that it was just such we-know-best arrogance and not listening to people that sent the Conservative Party into the wilderness for the Blair years.
History is repeating itself, although it has to be said that the sheer quantities of banana skins the Cameron government throw in front of themselves is quite spectacular even by former standards.
As Nigel Farage said, we are governed by school kids.
I heard Jonah Goldberg say yesterday, for the liberals, the new definition of “Facist” is a conservative who is winning an argument with logic and facts. Thank goodness AB Carey has the wherewithal to speak out.
Yes, Lord Carey has the courage to take on peoples arguments and to put the other side courteously but firmly. Kudos to him for that.
I suppose the other think I note is the rising level of hysteria from the government’s ministers on this topic as they have been suprised to find that the majority of the country and the Conservative Party do not agree with them. Hence the extraordinary comments of Nick Herbert and Liz Featherstone. It is as though they are trying to shout everyone down to make them shut up. Just like school kids do. We have descended to the bully behaviour of the playground.
Well, as William Westwood, late Bishop of Peterborough, remarked to me once, “Those who live by the media will die by the media.” Though I like Nick as a person very much, and respect him highly, if he’s going to bring his private opinions into the public arena he’s got to deal with the fact that other people may be able to tellingly refute them.
#4–Every state in the US which has voted on the issue has voted it down. It has only passed in state legislatures, never in a general election. Even in the land of fruits and nuts (California) it was voted down; so the activists have resorted to the Federal Coutrs to find some new constiturional right in order to overturn the will and vote of a majority of the people.
The churches in Australia are starting to speak out publicly against SSM. The Prime Minister (an agnostic) and the Opposition Leader (a Roman Catholic) have both stated that they disagree with it. But the liberal activists are still going to try to push it through Parliament.
I am glad to see that many bishops in the Church of England are demonstrating some real spine on this. They are not afraid to speak out publicly, to say that SSM is a really bad idea. Good on them.