Anglican Mainstream

In Any Questions on BBC Radio 4 Friday May 24, the chairman, Jonathan Dimbleby asked for a straw vote from the audience on whether they were glad for 'gay marriage' to go ahead. A large majority of the audience in West Byfleet did not wish gay marriage to go ahead.

On the panel Brendan O’Neill criticized people who pathologised those who hold views they do not like as having a ‘phobia’ – an irrational fear. Speakers argued that the Prime Minister was provoking activists in his party in order to show how out of touch they were, but this had backfired on him.  He was provoking them while still asking them to distribute party leaflets.  Trevor Cavanagh thought that marriage should be left to the churches, not to politicians.

Listen here (starts at around 18.30 minutes)

Repeated on Saturday at 1.10 p.m. 

by Blaise Joseph, MercatorNet

By Kevin Meagher, Labour Uncut

by Peter Wooding, CBN

A recent poll shows two thirds of Christians in the United Kingdom believe they are a persecuted minority.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey says the situation isn't that bad yet, but he does believe that discrimination against Christians is getting worse and that Prime Minister David Cameron is responsible.

Cameron's support for gay marriage, along with a growing number of discrimination cases against Christians in the workplace, had led Lord Carey to accuse the prime minister of betraying Christians.

The former archbishop wrote an article in the Daily Mail accusing the government of aiding and abetting discrimination against Christians and said many doubted Cameron's sincerity in pledging to protect their freedoms.

"I was very keen to make a very clear statement about what I regard as the duplicity of the prime minister in saying wonderful words about the Christian church and what the leaders are doing…but the actions of his government go in a completely different direction," he wrote.

Read here

By Andrew Carey,CEN

There were intriguing developments over the weekend in both the arithmetic of gay marriage and the implications of the change.

The so-called wrecking amendment by one of the Bill’s chief opponents, Tim Loughton, the former children’s minister, seeks to open up civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples. Loughton is playing on one of the most glaring inequalities that the Bill opens up – the prospect of gay couples having access to both marriage and civil partnerships when heterosexuals can only avail themselves of one.

He has taken advantage of both the botched and rushed nature of the legislation to confront the government with its deficiencies.

There were signs that the government might seize the opportunity of a defeat to shelve plans for gay marriage, which have proved disastrous to its membership numbers. Yet given the personal investment of the Prime Minister in these proposals, any cowardice in the face of fire will probably destroy his reputation forever.

The government claims that opening up civil partnerships will have cost implications that need to be consulted upon and could lead to the postponement of the Bill beyond the next General Election.

Such a postponement might buy the support of some long-suffering Conservative activists but will not be trusted by all opponents, some of whom have already transferred their allegiance to UKIP.

The Prime Minister’s problems were compounded by reports that a senior figure had described the Conservative Party’s grassroots supporters as ‘swivel-eyed loons’. The trouble for Mr Cameron is that there is no credible dismissal of such an insult because this attitude is all of a piece with a general disdain and insulting tone towards any dissent.

Make no mistake, the alleged remarks and the dismissive attitude of this senior Tory figure represents a widespread metropolitan and elitist snobbery to all those who don’t accept the politically correct wisdom of the day. Those of us who oppose gay marriage are regarded by many of our elected representatives as ‘swivel-eyed loons’, as well as homophobes and bigots.

In the face of such arrogance there seems little hope for courteous and intelligent debate.

By Mike Judge, Huffington Post

By Maggie Gallagher, National Review

In Scandinavia, where hostility to the two-parent family is central to the ruling political orthodoxy, the widening of the legal definition of marriage has done nothing to stop the institution decaying.

 

The same applies in Spain, where the Catholic Church still retains significant social influence and state policy has not been so antagonistic to traditional family life. Gay marriage was first sanctioned in 2005, and since then the decline in heterosexual marriage rates has been precipitous.

 

Likewise in Holland, where the traditional Protestant culture has fought against the increasingly predominant tolerant anarchy so beloved of liberal campaigners.

 

Since the Dutch legalised same-sex marriage in 2001, the concept of long-term commitment among heterosexuals has been evaporating — not least because of the parallel introduction of ‘registered partnership’ or ‘cohabitation agreements’ for heterosexuals.

 

Forty per cent of first babies are now born to unmarried mothers in Holland, a doubling of the rate since 2000.

 

This is tragic proof of the misguided belief that same-sex marriage could help to reinforce the value of traditional marriage. And, in any case, this belief has always been absurd and is wholly undermined by the evidence.”

By Alexander Boot

By Peter Ould

[...]  These arguments are laid out in much greater detail in the George et al paper that was published two and a half years ago and I recommend that you take a good long moment to read that before continuing.

by Patricia Morgan, Mailonline

[...]  The same applies to same-sex marriage today. The upbeat language of the Tory modernisers is based on nothing more than self-delusion and wishful thinking.

Look at what has happened in those countries that have already made same-sex marriage legal. In not one case has there been any indication of a wider revival in marriage. Indeed, in most countries its decline has merely accelerated.

In Scandinavia, where hostility to the two-parent family is central to the ruling political orthodoxy, the widening of the legal definition of marriage has done nothing to stop the institution decaying.

The same applies in Spain, where the Catholic Church still retains significant social influence and state policy has not been so antagonistic to traditional family life. Gay marriage was first sanctioned in 2005, and since then the decline in heterosexual marriage rates has been precipitous.

Likewise in Holland, where the traditional Protestant culture has fought against the increasingly predominant tolerant anarchy so beloved of liberal campaigners.

Since the Dutch legalised same-sex marriage in 2001, the concept of long-term commitment among heterosexuals has been evaporating — not least because of the parallel introduction of ‘registered partnership’ or ‘cohabitation agreements’ for heterosexuals.

Forty per cent of first babies are now born to unmarried mothers in Holland, a doubling of the rate since 2000.

This is tragic proof of the misguided belief that same-sex marriage could help to reinforce the value of traditional marriage. And, in any case, this belief has always been absurd and is wholly undermined by the evidence.

For the truth is that the drive for gay wedlock is precisely the same instinct that wants to destroy traditional marriage. It is part of the pernicious notion of social equality.

Read here

Patricia Morgan's submission, on behalf of SPUC, to the Parliamentary Committee may be read here

by Steve Doughty, Mailonline

From London Evening Standard

David Cameron today insisted he was proud of legislation to introduce gay marriage, despite a Commons rebellion which saw 130 of his own MPs oppose the change last night.
 
But in an apparent olive branch to traditionalist Tories, the Prime Minister promised there would be no more legislation on social issues like homosexual equality for the remainder of this Parliament, and that the coalition Government will focus on the economy and welfare reform for the next two years.

The Prime Minister saw his will done as the controversial Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill completed its passage through the Commons last night by 366 votes to 161 – a majority of 205 – but more Tory MPs opposed it than supported it.

In a further blow after weeks of infighting, a YouGov poll put the Conservatives on just 27 per cent – equalling their lowest rating since 2000 – with Labour's lead stretching to 11 points.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Cameron sought to brush off the significance of the Tory rebellion: "The fact is this is a free vote issue that parliaments have to determine. Our House of Commons has just determined that.

"I think we should think about it like this – that there will be young boys in schools today who are gay, who are worried about being bullied, who are worried about what society thinks of them, who can see that the highest parliament in the land has said that their love is worth the same as anybody else's love and that we believe in equality.

"I think they will stand that bit taller today and I'm proud of the fact that that has happened."

Read here

Read also:  Cameron and the gay schoolboys: is this how to win over Tory rebels?  from The Week

By Fr Ed Tomlinson

[...]  If you doubt that this move undermines marriage consider the implications of the proposals passed in the commons tonight. Laws are forming which will prove utterly confusing, and entirely adult centred, to any future five year old. No longer will there be a gold standard, a universally recognised marital union to hold families together. The place where children instinctively feel THEY belong. Instead we will have a smorgasbord of adult relationships – each as devoid of obvious meaning as the next. And none of them uniquely centred around the young. For, of course, all must be not only equal but the same! Such is the nonsense spouted today where feelings now trump logic.

Tom and Adam will be married but clearly unable to produce offspring alone. Dave and Molly will be heterosexuals in a civil partnership who do have children. When a child asks “what is the difference between the civil partnership and marriage and between civil marriage and religious marriage?” How on earth will parents respond? It will all sound so confusing and unclear. What will society be saying about the purpose of sex, the place of children and much more besides? And where we once encouraged morality by teaching children to wait for sex until married- what will we say in future? Please hang off until you opt for civil partnership/marriage/cohabitation or just feel like it? There will be no obvious forum in which sex and the rearing of children truly belongs.

We will have descended into a culture in which all relationships are largely self defined and on the same footing. Brilliant news for those simply wanting to be PC, or to pretend they are same when basic biology clearly shows difference, but devastating for marriage which will be in such a weaker and more obfuscated place than ever before.

Yet Cameron and co. still insist this move is about strengthening marriage…you couldn’t invent it.

Read here

By Gillan Scott, God and Politics in the UK

By Brendan O'Neill, Telegraph

I know the only thing you’re allowed to say about gay marriage is “Yay!” and that if you say anything else you’re a weirdo hateful bigot. But permit to make just one non-yay-based observation about it. Which is this: gay marriage has utterly transformed, for the worse, the meaning of social progress.

Throughout modern history, big, democratic, civil rightsy leaps forward have had two things in common. First, they were demanded by very large and often very angry sections of the public; and second, it took ages and ages for the political classes to concede to them. And when they did eventually cave in and legislate for the new liberty or opportunity being demanded by the hordes, they tended to do so begrudgingly, often while wearing a sneer.

Born from mass, passionate demands from below and later instituted very reluctantly by those up above – that is the history of socially progressive developments. From the mass gatherings of hundreds of thousands of working men demanding the right to vote in the 1800s, to the long marches and harebrained stunts of the Suffragette movement in the early 20th century, to the painful and violent slog for equality by black civil rights activists in 1950s America, social progress was for generations understood as something demanded by the little people in the face of stubborn, fearful, unenlightened elites.

The gay marriage campaign absolutely eviscerates that view of social progress. It turns it completely on its head. It redefines social progress to mean the polar opposite of what it meant for most of the modern period: no longer the struggle of the man in the street against illiberal officialdom, but rather the struggle of right-on officials against the prejudices and idiocy of the man in the street.

Read here

By Nicholas Watt, Guardian

Opponents of bill say peers have every right to oppose it because it was not in coalition agreement or any party manifesto

By Ann Widdecombe, Daily Express

IT'S said the devil is in the detail and on Monday night the true agenda of the Government’s drive for gay marriage became clear for all to see, for there were three amendments to protect the exercise of conscience, each very moderate in intent and the frontbench guidance was to reject all of them.

In short this Bill is not about liberty and equality but about oppression and state orthodoxy, about Soviet-style persecution in the work place for an opinion given in a private context, about compelling conformity even where conformity is not necessary.

In all 170 Conservative MPs, more than half David Cameron’s party, voted for one or more of these amendments in the course of the evening. One was the so-called Adrian Smith amendment. Adrian Smith, readers may recall, was the official at Trafford Housing Trust who was demoted at work and given a 40 per cent pay cut because he wrote on his private Facebook site that he opposed gay marriage.

The proposed change to the Bill safeguarded the free expression of conscience but ministers opposed it.

They could hardly argue, after the Adrian Smith case, that such protection was unnecessary.

One hundred and twenty seven Conservative MPs, including a Cabinet Minister who had supported the Bill, voted for it in vain.

Read here

By Matt Chorley, Mailonline

Norman Tebbit has launched a foul-mouthed attack on David Cameron, claiming the Tory leader has ‘f***** things up’ by pressing ahead with gay marriage laws.

The former party chairman’s extraordinary public criticism of the current leadership emerged after the Prime Minister was forced to rely on Labour support to rescue same-sex weddings.

[...]  Lord Tebbit added: ‘If [UKIP] make significant gains in the European elections, I know there’s people rich enough to get involved and fund a significant campaign at a general election.’

Discussing the impact of legalising gay marriage, Lord Tebbit suggested it be extended to family members.

He said: ‘It’s like one of my colleagues said: we’ve got to make these same-sex marriages available to all. It would lift my worries about inheritance tax because maybe I’d be allowed to marry my son. Why not?

‘Why shouldn’t a mother marry her daughter? Why shouldn’t two elderly sisters living together marry each other? I quite fancy my brother!’

Lord Tebbit also questioned whether the gay marriage laws could cause chaos when combined with changes to the rules of succession, which would allow an older female heir to the throne to become monarch.

‘I said to a minister I know: “Have you thought this through? Because you’re doing the law of succession, too.”

‘When we have a queen who is a lesbian and she marries another lady and then decides she would like to have a child and someone donates sperm and she gives birth to a child, is that child heir to the throne?’

Lord Tebbit later admitted he had sworn during the interview. ‘It’s not the language I normally use, but during a long interview I may well have said it,’ he told The Times.

Mr Cameron issued a love letter to Tory activists last night as UKIP closed to within two points in the opinion polls.

The peace offering followed revelations that a senior ally of the Prime Minister had branded the party faithful ‘swivel-eyed loons’. MPs warn that his leadership is in peril amid discontent on Europe and gay marriage.

The scale of the crisis was shown last night by a new poll that puts the Tories down five points on just 24 per cent, 11 behind Labour.

UKIP – up six points in a month – was on 22 per cent, double the level of Lib Dem support.

Read here

MPs voted in favour of the third reading of the equal marriage bill by 366 to 161, but in a significant blow to David Cameron, 136 Conservative MPs are thought to have voted against it, including Environment Secretary Owen Paterson and Welsh Secretary David Jones, with just 123 voting in favour. If confirmed, those figures would mean that more Tories opposed the bill this time round than at its second reading, when 134 voted against it (excluding tellers), and that fewer supported it (127 did so last time).Conservatives: 128 voted against

Nigel Adams (Selby & Ainsty), Adam Afriyie (Windsor), Peter Aldous (Waveney), David Amess (Southend West), Richard Bacon (Norfolk South), Guto Bebb (Aberconwy), Henry Bellingham (Norfolk North West), Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley), Andrew Bingham (High Peak), Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West & Abingdon), Peter Bone (Wellingborough), Graham Brady (Altrincham & Sale West), Julian Brazier (Canterbury), Andrew Bridgen (Leicestershire North West), Steve Brine (Winchester), Fiona Bruce (Congleton),

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