I suspect that, by now, even [David] Cameron is wondering if this has not all spun out of control. It’s perfectly easy to see his original logic. As a matter of principle, he believes in marriage and would like it to be accessible to everyone. If the Unitarian Church and certain strands of Judaism want to marry gay couples on their premises, then why should government stand in their way? For the record, I quite agree. Religious freedom in Britain ought to be universal, extended to the handful of churches or synagogues who want same-sex marriage. To lift the ban ought to be a technical issue, an amendment to the Civil Partnership Act 2004 requiring no fanfare.
But this time, there has been not just a fanfare, but the drumbeat of war. Nick Clegg released the text of a speech in which he regretted the fact that economic turmoil “gives the bigots a stick to beat us with, as they demand we ‘postpone’ the equalities agenda”. He later withdrew the b-word, but his point was made: that Britain is now divided into two camps. You have the Liberal Democrats, friends of equality. And on the other side, the “bigots” ”“ a group that presumably includes followers of every mainstream religion. A former adviser to Clegg resurfaced to say that his boss ought to have stuck to his word, because such people are indeed bigots.
We continue to fiddle while Rome burns.
The Government is obsessed with gay marriage while neglecting the economy which they were elected to sort out, much as the Church of England is obsessed with bishops while neglecting the mission of evangelism to which it is called.
But we are ruled by a bunch of developmentally-retarded schoolboys, who still think they are in the school debating society, refuse to grow up, refuse to get a job, and haven’t a clue about the concerns of the real grown-ups trying to keep their jobs and raise a family, with which they get no credit or help [and who by the way, have been given no reason to give a stuff about the Church of England, much less its maddening bishop-obsession].
Fraser Nelson is right about Britain being by and large a tolerant country, although I would have thought that Elton John was a better example of a gay national treasure than Graham Norton, who always has me stabbing at the remote when he appears on the screen.
Strife and trouble – is David Cameron really so naive that he didn’t expect this?
The church has not blessed or celebrated or condoned gay “marriage” for 2,000 years, and Cameron thought he could just introduce it without repercussions… how did this man get to be Prime Minister in the first place?