Christian campaigners are petitioning Prime Minister David Cameron to stop the introduction of same-sex marriage.
Coalition for Marriage (C4M) said it was emailing 175,000 people with a petition against the government’s plan to legislate for gay marriage by 2015.
So who are these luddites that want to drag us back to the dark ages? Well, the list of shame includes …
Lord Carey of Clifton, former Archbishop
Lord Mackay of Clashfern, former Lord Chancellor
Fiona Bruce MP, Conservative
Jim Dobbin MP, Labour
Joe Benton MP, Labour
Edward Leigh MP, Conservative
David Nuttall MP, Conservative
Stewart Jackson MP, Conservative
Lord Brennan QC, Labour
Lord Stoddart of Swindon, Independent Labour Peer
Lord Singh of Wimbledon (Director Network of Sikh Organisations)
Prof. Sir Denis Pereira Gray, Exeter
Prof. Brenda Almond, President of the Philosophical Society of England
Rt Revd Peter Forster, Bishop of Chester
Rt Revd Anthony Priddis, Bishop of Hereford
Rt Revd Michael Langrish, Bishop of Exeter
Rt Revd James Newcome, Bishop of Carlisle
Yep, all folks who feel that having an imaginary friend entitles them to be bigots and proud of that fact.
Martin Robins has analyzed their claims and nicely trashes it all here. Apparently the Daily Mail claims they are a grassroots organisation!!! … I must confess, I’m curious to understand how a bunch of Victorian Bishops and MP’s can be considered to be “grassroots”.
If you’re heterosexual and you want to get married, your rights will not be affected in the slightest by gay marriage. It will have no conceivable impact on you, your children, or wider society.
…
This is such an unholy and inconsistent mess of an argument that’s very hard to untangle it. Carey wants to invoke the legal definition of marriage as immutable, while simultaneously arguing that nobody has the right to define marriage. – Martin Robbins
Go read all that Martin says … he does a great job illustrating that the C4M folks are a bunch of complete plonkers and don’t have a credible argument.
OK, so why am I blogging? Well, I’ve been pondering over these C4M nuts and wondering if they might scupper the proposed legistlation. My conclusion is “No”, for the following reasons …
- A Populus poll in 2009 found that 61% of the UK public believe: ‘Gay couples should have an equal right to get married, not just to have civil partnerships.’ Only 33% disagreed.
- The ban on same-sex marriage is discrimination. It violates the democratic principle that everyone should be equal before the law. Given the wide public support for this, would the government (the folks who rather like being voted for) really swim against the tide on this and allow some elderly Bishops to dictate to them in a manner that will loose them votes.
So who has actually backed the right of gay couples to marry? Basically the folks that matter, that includes all the leading politicians … David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg, Boris Johnson and a growing number of Tory MPs, including Chloe Smith, Mike Weatherley and Margot James.
If you are truly not sure about this, then how would you feel if there was discrimination against people on some other basis …for example imagine the outrage if they proposed a ban on small people or spanish people from getting married.
In other words, it is going to happen … even if we do have the drag a bunch of befuddled homophobic Bishops along with us kicking and screaming in protest. Now is the right time for them to wake up and join the rest of us here in the 21st century, and perhaps try being decent human beings for a change.