Anglican Mainstream

by James Chapman, Mailonline

Critics of gay marriage are to get a new protection in law, senior government sources say.

Culture Secretary Maria Miller is said to be about to propose changing the Public Order Act so those who believe same-sex weddings are wrong can say so publicly without fear of prosecution.

The move is part of government attempts to prevent legislation running into further trouble as it progresses through Parliament.

Faith minister Baroness Warsi abstained in a key vote in the House of Lords, telling friends that religious groups needed extra protection.

Now the Culture Secretary is preparing to amend the Public Order Act so it is ‘clear that people will be protected who want to express their belief that marriage should be between a man and a woman’, a source said.

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By Tim Ross, Telegraph

David Cameron should have held a debate on giving tax breaks to married couples before legalising gay marriage, a Conservative minister has said

Anna Soubry, the outspoken public health minister, is a supporter of allowing same-sex couples to marry and voted in favour of the reforms.

However, after encountering “fierce” opposition from her constituents in Broxtowe, Notts, Ms Soubry acknowledged that the government could have handled the controversial legislation better.

She is the first minister to suggest that discussing tax breaks for married couples should have been an earlier priority in the wake of the row over equality for homosexual couples.

The Prime Minister has promised to introduce a transferable tax allowance for married couples before the next general election, due in 2015. The tax break is a key demand of traditionalist Conservatives who oppose gay marriage.

However, the government has refused to countenance tax breaks for married couples as a “trade off” for the same-sex marriage reforms and some MPs fear the 2015 timetable is in doubt.

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By Kirsten Andersen, LifeSite News

The Obama Administration’s ongoing celebration of homosexual “Pride Month” has seemingly carried over into its ambassadorial nominations.

From The Christian Institute

A Tory MP wants David Cameron ousted as party leader because he “marched us on to the guns” over gay marriage.

Andrew Bridgen, MP for North West Leicestershire, says the issue has driven voters into the arms of UKIP.

He said: “I believe the Prime Minister has blundered by forcing through the gay marriage vote. 

“This was something we did not have to do. The PM marched us on to the guns over this and it has cost us a lot of support.”

By pushing ahead with issues like gay marriage, “Mr Cameron has fuelled the rise of UKIP. We have created our own nemesis,” he said.

Mr Bridgen has signed a letter calling for a vote of no confidence in Mr Cameron’s leadership of the Conservative Party.

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by Simon Walters and Brendan Carlin, Mailonline

David Cameron faced a new Tory revolt last night after a second Conservative MP admitted he has secretly asked for a vote aimed at sacking him as leader.

Anti-gay marriage MP Andrew Bridgen confirmed to The Mail on Sunday that he has written to party chiefs calling for a vote of 'no confidence' in Mr Cameron.

It is believed that as many as 25 of the 46 Tory MPs needed to trigger a vote on the Prime Minister's future have now sent letters to senior backbencher Graham Brady, chairman of the Tory 1922 Committee.

Businessman Mr Bridgen, MP for North West Leicestershire, said the Tories could lose the next Election unless Mr Cameron was replaced.

'There is a credibility problem with the current leader,' he said. 'It's like being in an aeroplane. The pilot doesn't know how to land it. We can either do something about it . . . or sit back, watch the in-flight movies and wait for the inevitable.'

[...]  Mr Bridgen's stand against Mr Cameron emerged as a poll commissioned by Tory peer Lord Ashcroft showed that, for the first time, Mr Cameron's ratings are lagging behind those of his party.

Mr Bridgen has voiced doubts about Mr Cameron privately for some time, but the gay marriage issue was the last straw. He wrote to Mr Brady calling for a vote of no confidence in Mr Cameron as the legislation was being debated in the Commons last month.

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From The Christian Institute

David Cameron is losing the support of voters and grassroots members over controversial issues like same-sex marriage, according to new research.

One poll, from Tory Peer Lord Ashcroft, showed only 29 per cent of voters believe the Conservatives will win the next election, compared with 32 per cent in January.

He said the poll showed “the price we have paid for spending half a year talking amongst ourselves” – on issues like same-sex marriage.
 
Lord Ashcroft’s survey shows the issue is a vote loser for the Tories, with 15 per cent saying they’re less likely to vote for a party that legalises gay marriage.

Only 12 per cent of people say they are more likely to vote for such a party. One third of people said they favour gay marriage, but it wouldn’t affect their vote.

And an ITV News survey revealed that nearly three quarters of local Conservative associations have lost members, with over half of them saying it is because of gay marriage.

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By Stephen Moss, Guardian

Ann Widdecombe invites Stephen Moss in for tea and cake – and a lecture on gay marriage, societal breakdown and David Cameron's 'pig-headed' policies

[...]  Given her 23 years as MP for Maidstone, her time as prisons minister and stints as shadow health secretary and shadow home secretary, she could have expected to be elevated to the House of Lords, but the call from David Cameron never came. "I was very disappointed," she admits, "but no one has a prescriptive right to go there. It's entirely within the gift of the prime minister. I don't think about it any more." Some have suggested her opposition to hunting was the reason she was ignored, but it may have been more personal than that. "I don't meet his [Cameron's] modernisation agenda," she says. "He probably put the flags out when I left parliament."

In the book, she calls Cameron "big-headed" and "pig-headed". "I wish he would acknowledge the concerns there are, and listen to people," she tells me. "All through gay marriage the story I got back was not that the prime minister disagreed with people, but that he wouldn't give them a hearing. You've got to listen, or at least pretend to be listening." Etonian arrogance? "That's the caricature," she says, "but I'm not worried about Eton. Douglas Hurd went to Eton, Harold Macmillan went to Eton. It's a question of understanding the role. He got it far too soon. He would have brought greater maturity and kindness to the job if he'd been a bit older and a bit more blooded by the world."

While welcoming Iain Duncan Smith's attack on welfare dependency and Michael Gove's education shakeup, Widdecombe is pleased to have escaped this parliament. "I wouldn't have enjoyed coalition. I certainly would not have been at one with him [Cameron] over gay marriage, and I don't like this thing of image, image, image." She is not a fan of fast-tracking women and ethnic minority parliamentary candidates, and has some fun in the book at Louise Mensch's expense. "A lot of the A-listers didn't realise what it was about," she says, contrasting favoured candidates being parachuted into the Commons with her own experience of standing in two unfavourable seats before landing a safe one. "I understood what a committee room was; I'd done the jumble sales; I knew how to relate to the volunteers."

Ah, yes, the swivel-eyed loons allegedly castigated by one of Cameron's aides. "What a thing to say," she exclaims in her slightly strangulated voice. "Even if it was a joke, it was a stupid thing to say, because it reinforces the view that Downing Street doesn't care tuppence for the people who put them there." Widdecombe was always the darling of local Conservative associations and still speaks at meetings, but these days they want her more for her celebrity than her trenchant views on capital punishment and immigration. "All they want to hear about now is Strictly," she says. "When I start talking about the economy and universal benefits, they're not as interested as once they were."

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by Gerri Peev, Mailonline

The Archbishop of Canterbury has warned David Cameron’s push for gay marriage will diminish the institution and weaken the family.

In his first major intervention on the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, the Most Rev Justin Welby said he could not support the legislation ‘as it stands’.

Despite their vocal opposition, bishops are set to abstain from a crunch vote on gay marriage in the House of Lords tonight.

The vote comes as sources said there had been pressure from Downing Street on Church House, the headquarters of the Church of England.
 
Last night, Archbishop Welby argued that same sex marriage ‘at its heart is not a faith issue, it is about the general social good’.

He added: ‘Rather than adding a new and valued institution alongside it for same gender relationships, which I would personally strongly support to strengthen us all, this Bill weakens what exists and replaces it with a less good option that is neither equal nor effective.

‘The concept of marriage as a normative place for procreation is lost; the idea of marriage as covenant is diminished; the family in its normal sense, predating the state, and as our base community of society, as we have already heard, is weakened.’

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By John Bingham, Telegraph

Bishops are facing intense pressure from inside the Church of England not to use their votes in the House of Lords to block gay marriage, The Daily Telegraph has learnt.

Despite vocal opposition from the Church to the Government’s plans to allow same-sex couples to marry, it is understood that senior officials have personally urged bishops to stay away from this week’s vote.

They fear that a large bloc of clerics turning up to vote down the bill could rebound on the Church, reopening questions over the right of bishops to sit in the Lords and even raise the prospect of disestablishment.

They have also told bishops privately that they are convinced the bill, which includes legal “locks” to prevent clergy being forced to carry out same-sex weddings against their beliefs, is the “best” they could hope to achieve.

It comes amid warnings of a “dangerous” constitutional stand-off between the Commons and the Lords if peers vote to reject the bill, which has already received strong backing from MPs.

Peers will begin two days of debates on the bill today with a vote on Tuesday.

Writing in The Daily Telegraph Viscount Astor, the stepfather of David Cameron’s wife Samantha, argues that blocking the bill in the upper chamber could threaten the future position of the House of Lords itself.

Meanwhile an alliance of independent church leaders has issued a strongly worded call to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby, not only to vote against the bill himself but to press other bishops to do so.

In a letter to be handed in to Lambeth Palace this morning, 30 leaders of independent churches, including a string of so-called “black majority” churches, warn that the church of England faces a “defining point” over the issue of same-sex marriage.

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From Conservative Grassroots

• Marriage Bill having “very negative effect” on Party morale and electoral appeal
• “Alienating much of our core support whilst failing to attract new voters” Passage through the Commons
• “all very totalitarian and rather unBritish”

Replying to a letter from the Prime Minister (download from link), the Chairman of Conservative Grassroots has warned Mr Cameron that in pushing ahead with the controversial Bill to redefine marriage, “the golden inheritance of every previous generation that has been lovingly handed down to us, is now being smashed by you on the anvil of so-called ‘equality and fairness’.”“Is this the ‘new intolerance’?” he goes on to ask.

The strongly worded letter comes amidst reports of un-ease amongst Conservative Peers over the Coalition’s Same Sex Marriage Bill being considered by the House of Lords this week.

An additional day has been allocated for the debate, reportedly following Government anxiety over whether it would win a late-night vote.

The Chairman of Conservative Grassroots, Bob Woollard, begins his letter by highlighting that desire for electoral success in 2015 drives concerns over the Bill, explaining that: “what is also clear to us from both the polling evidence and our own experience on the ground is that this Bill is having a very negative effect on both Party morale and electoral appeal.” He continues, “it is alienating much of our core support whilst failing to attract new voters. This is deeply concerning with under two years before the general election.”

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by Matt Chorley, Mailonline

Conservative MPs claim they were threatened by party whips to back gay marriage or their political career would be finished.

Tories were also reportedly warned they would lose financial and organisational backing at the next election if they refused to fall into line – something party insiders dismissed today as ‘categorically untrue’.

More than a dozen angry backbenchers have now written to peers urging them to oppose the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill in a key vote on Monday.

David Cameron has said he is ‘proud’ to have supported same-sex weddings, arguing that young boys at school who think they might be gay and are being bullied will 'stand a bit taller' as a result of the government passing equality laws.

But last week 130 Tory MPs voted against gay marriage legislation.

Officially it was a free vote, with the Prime Minister at pains to stress that those who oppose it are not ‘wrong-headed or bigoted’.

However, today it was claimed that intense pressure was put on ambitious Tory MPs to support the reform, which has been seen as key to what remains of Mr Cameron’s modernisation of the party.

It also emerged that the key vote in the House of Lords could be held after 2am on Tuesday morning, with supporters of same-sex marriages fearing it could be defeated.
 
A letter signed by 15 MPs, including former Tory ministers, urges peers to reject the Bill, arguing it has no mandate. The letter was published by the Guido Fawkes blog.

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By Nigel Morris, Independent

Most Britons believe the Conservatives are more divided today than they were under John Major, according to a poll indicating that voters are deserting the party after a series of internal rows.

A large majority of voters think David Cameron lacks the leadership skills to deliver victory at the next election, the survey for The Independent shows.

The scathing verdict on the health of the Tory party revealed by the ComRes survey follows a bruising fortnight for the Prime Minister in which he was hit by backbench rebellions over Europe and same-sex marriage.

It also finds backing for the UK Independence Party has climbed to a record high, with nearly a fifth of Tory supporters at the last election saying they would switch their allegiance to Nigel Farage’s party.

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From Western Morning News

Disillusioned grass-roots Tories in the Westcountry are tearing up their membership cards in disgust at David Cameron's betrayal of so- called traditional "Anglo-Saxon Conservative" values.

The number of members quitting is well into double figures at some local constituency associations for the first time in years in Devon and Cornwall, as anger rages over proposals for gay marriage.

The rise of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), demands for a referendum on Europe and frustration over the coalition with the Liberal emocrats has fuelled deep unrest, which has been worsened by perceptions that the leadership is out of touch with supporters.

Fury over claims that senior party figures regard unhappy activists as "swivel-eyed loons" now appears to be driving once-loyal Tories to defect.

Councillor Robert Oxborough, chairman of Torridge and West Devon Conservative Association, was one of 30 chairmen to sign a letter opposed to gay marriage recently.

He praised the Government for tackling the deficit and called on members to stick by the party.

However, he said members were "disillusioned" by gay weddings undermining traditional marriage and overseas aid pledges, against fears money is going to the pockets of corrupt governments.

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By Christopher Booker, Telegraph

In view of the devastation inflicted on the Tory party by the gay-marriage issue, it is remarkable how little interest has been shown in the story that lies behind David Cameron’s desperation to get a measure – that was not mentioned in his 2010 election manifesto – on to the statute book by no later than June this year.

As I recounted here on February 9, the drive to get same-sex marriage into law was masterminded from 2010 onwards by an alliance between Theresa May, the Conservative Home Secretary, Lynne Featherstone, the Lib Dem equalities minister, and gay pressure groups, led by one called Equal Love. They pushed the issue forward, not in Westminster, but through the Council of Europe, culminating in March last year with a day-long “secret conference” chaired by Miss Featherstone in Strasbourg. With the public excluded for the first time in the Council’s history, it was here that – with the active support of Sir Nicolas Bratza, the British president of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) – a deadline was set for their planned coup of June 2013. If, by this date, “several countries” had managed to put gay marriage into law, Sir Nicolas pledged that his court would then declare same-sex marriage to be a Europe-wide human right. Hence the recent rush for several countries to oblige, including France, where gay marriage has brought thousands of protesters out on to the streets. And hence last Tuesday’s unprecedented revolt in the House of Commons, when 133 Tories voted against their government.

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By Martha Kirkpatrick, ATV Today

The Conservative Party is facing more turmoil over its gay marriage bills as top donors have threatened to quit.

Pink News reports that several top donors to the party are threatening to quit over issues including the equal marriage bill. The issue of gay marriage has split the Tory party with David Cameron supporting equal marriage while many of his MPs are against it.

Over 100 MPs voted against marriage equality at the last reading of the Bill in the House of Commons and the Prime Minister has faced repeated calls for the bill to be abandoned.

There are concerns from some within the party that they will lose votes to UKIP at the next general election if gay marriage is legalised. While David Cameron has stood firm in his support for gay marriage when it comes to critics within the party the possibility of top donors quitting may shake him. Sources claim that three top donors, who have donated millions, are now threatening to leave unless the marriage equality bill is dropped.

The rise of UKIP, in local elections, has shaken the Tory Party and Cameron has sought to appease his critics – and reach out to disfranchised party supporters – by promising a referendum on EU membership IF he wins the next election. However, many within the party are not convinced that is enough to secure his position and rumblings about gay marriage are likely to carry on.

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By Simon Usborne, Independent

[...]  The woman behind the desk, who, again, preferred not to be named, was a life-long Tory voter whose partner has run for local office in nearby Newport Pagnell. The couple displays posters in the windows of their home during elections. Did they identify themselves as loons?

by Steve Doughty, Mailonline

Daily Mail Comment

In a desperate bid to build bridges with the Conservative rank and file, David Cameron has emailed party members to protest that he is on their side. Today, the Mail imagines how recipients of his ‘personal note’ may reply.

Dear Prime Minister,

We are grateful for your assurance that you would never have around you those who sneer at us (though the fact that you feel it necessary to spell this out says much about the tensions between us).

We merely observe that this sits uneasily with the reports that a member of your inner circle has dismissed us as ‘mad, swivel-eyed loons’.

We know newspapers often get things wrong. But these claims square so fully with our experience of the way we are seen by High Command that, on this occasion, we are inclined to believe them.

Indeed, you yourself used similarly contemptuous language when you dismissed UKIP as ‘fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists mostly’.

As loyal Conservatives, we would not trust Nigel Farage an inch with the levers of power. Nevertheless he speaks much common sense, which we would prefer to hear from you.

Like him, we are worried that you are doing far too little to control immigration. This is not because we are racists, but because we are deeply concerned that there should be jobs and homes for our children – and, yes, because we treasure our national identity and culture.

Like UKIP, too, many of us are frankly baffled by your obsession with gay marriage, which you didn’t think to mention in our election manifesto.

This is not because we are bigots, but because we believed you shared our party’s core belief in marriage between a man and a woman as the building block of a healthy society. And haven’t you more urgent things to worry about?

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By Simon Heffer, Mailonline

A measure of the bizarre political times in which we live is that the Prime Minister and Leader of the Conservative party felt yesterday that he had to email his dwindling band of activists and urge them to believe how much he values them.

‘I am proud to lead this party,’ said David Cameron.

‘I am proud of what you do. And I would never have around me those who sneered or thought otherwise.’

Sadly, that is not true. Mr Cameron is surrounded by people who sneer at the morals and values of his party’s grassroots supporters.

His defensive remarks were prompted by the disgraceful observation by one of his cronies — possibly Lord Feldman, his tennis partner and Tory vice-chairman — that the rank and file were ‘swivel-eyed loons’.

The insult had the authentic ring of the Notting Hill dinner table about it, as the Cameroonian elite ponder over the Barolo the ghastliness of the party members they have the misfortune to lead.

But Lord Feldman — if, indeed, it was he — is in a distinguished line of Tories who hate their party.

And they hate it because on a range of issues — Europe, same-sex marriage, the family, immigration, law and order and selective education — the mass of Conservative Britain obstinately refuses to think like them and their pals in the expensively educated metropolitan elite.

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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.

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