Members of Parliament tonight overwhelming endorsed historic legislation that will give gay couples the equal right to marry.
Almost half a century after homosexuality was legalised in Britain the House of Commons voted by a majority of 400 to 175 to redefine marriage and make it available to all.
But embarrassingly for David Cameron he failed to get a majority of his own MPs to support the move. 139 Tories, including two cabinet ministers, rebelled against the Government with just 132 supporting the measure. There were 75 abstentions.
The British “Empire” has been a small shell of what it once was for quite some time. This is the death rattle of a dying country. If it is not taken over by the Islamist immigrants, England and the rest of the UK are doomed. Enshrining sodomy into normalcy will not work there or anywhere else. Please if you want to say I am wrong, show me any culture that has survived after embracing sodomy.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
I see by articles linked at Anglican Mainstream that this is not a vote which enacts the bill as law. It moves it a step along in the process. What hope is there that this will ultimately fail?
Katherine, the House of Lords can in theory reject the bill, but is unlikely to do so. Even although the largest group there are crossbenchers, ie independents, there is a deeply held tradition that the peers only vote down the legislation of the lower house if it contravenes the constitution. You might be surprised to hear that we have one; it is ‘unwritten’ ie has accrued by convention, precedence and recognition.
Addendum: of course, Katherine, the Queen could in theory refuse to sign the act which brings the legislation into law. But the monarch would never act contrary to parliament’s expressed wishes. In cases like this her largely symbolic role as governor of the Church of England is meaningless.