Clowning around with marriage

David Cameron: "I'm a massive supporter of marriage and

 I don't want gay people to be excluded from a great institution.”

Many grassroots Tories are bewildered by what they see as David Cameron's betrayal over the government's plans to push through a redefinition of marriage but Tory warring against Tory is not a new phenomenon. In the Thatcher years the war was against the 'wets' and the question asked was "Is he one of us? Now it is, "Is he one of them?" There aresuggestions that gay MPs secretly risk being outed for publicly opposing same-sex weddings and further suggestions that Tory waverers are being press-ganged to back Cameron on the gay marriage vote or their careers will be damaged. Today there is a warning that teachers and the Church of England could be sued if they don't accept the change.

It is a mystery why the government is so intent on this change when nobody has been given the opportunity to vote on such a fundamental issue. There are enough examples of the absurdity of this agenda when a man refers to another man as his wife and a woman refers to another woman as her husband. At least that is a matter of choice but the whole process turns to farce when children are involved and a child's 'mother' or 'father' who, for biological reasons, evidently cannot be the wife or the husband in the relationship since the biological mother will be a surrogate and the father a donor, unless of course the father, or mother, in a same-sex relationship is the biological father, etc, etc. The proposedsolution of substituting 'parent' for mother and for father in same-sex relationships is far from convincing if one imagines a child crying 'Parent' during the night or trying to get his or her head around the situation and asking 'parent' ('mummy' or 'daddy') for an explanation.

The explanations given for the redefinition of marriage are based on false notions of love and equality. Some groups of people who love each other are rightly barred from marriage  for the well-being of society but as with all change, one step leads to another. Marriage as it stands has clear benefits for society. Couples in civil partnerships already have equality with the same rights as married couples. At the grassroots people of all persuasions are content with the status quo and simply do not understand why anyone would want to clown around with what has been regarded for centuries as a sacred institution. Clowns frequently make fools of themselves often falling flat on their face. Let's hope this is no exception.

Postscript

Three ministers holding the three great offices of state, have written a letter to The Telegraph saying that “attitudes to gay people have changed”. This has absolutely nothing to do with attitudes to gay people. It is the simple belief that marriage is the life-long union of one man and one woman. To suggest otherwise is pure deception. They claim that 'marriage has evolved over time and believe that opening it up to same-sex couples will strengthen, not weaken, the institution'. In fact marriage as an institution is declining with married couples now making up less than half the population, a position the Government were expected to address but instead of honouring their manifesto commitment on tax supporting marriage, they propose to give tax breaks to gay married couples! It is ministers' attitudes to heterosexual people that have changed.