There are activists in every Party whose eyes aren't entirely steady in their sockets. And swivel eyes, to mangle a metaphor, cut both ways – see here. But most Conservative members are normal enough. Tory activists are not untypical of the class which, if one takes a romantic view, has been the backbone of England for centuries – and, even if one takes a prosaic one, works (largely in the private sector), earns, provides, saves, and gives generously to charity. A high proportion of the members I know are involved in their local communities: indeed, they are the Big Society. But Tory members have undergone one significant change in the last 25 years or so. They are, on the whole, older people. The Conservative Party has been hit hard by the hollowing-out of conventional politics.

The response of the Party leadership, since 2005, could have been to strive for new members – or, alternatively, to abandon the concept of membership, and seek to build a new movement based on overlapping interest groups. Its view of what to do about declining membership has ebbed and flowed as Party Chairmen have come and gone, but one big point is clear. People who join political parties want to have a say in them – or at least a sense of ownership. At a national level, party members have no more say than when David Cameron became leader. And at a local level, they have less: the power of local members to select their own Parliamentary candidates has been diminished by the vogue for primaries. Membership costs £25 a year: no small sum. Payment is followed by a steady stream of letters and e-mails asking for more.

Read here

By James Kirkup, Daily Telegraph

Grassroots Conservative activists are “mad swivel-eyed loons” who are forcing Tory MPs to take extremist positions opposing gay marriage and Europe, one of David Cameron’s closest allies has said.

The comments, from a member of the Prime Minister’s inner circle, come amid recent rifts between Mr Cameron and his party over Coalition policies.

In debates about the family, some social scientists are asserting the primacy of theory over facts. Is this science?

In the March issue of Pediatrics, the publication of the American Academy of Pediatrics, an article called “Marriage and the well-being of children” appeared that considered the role of marriage in child outcomes. In a short statement, the authors dismissed the body of data on marriage and child outcomes as inconclusive. The authors went on to argue “even if empirical support for its claims was strong, the argument is morally insufficient for denying state recognition to other types of relationships.”

It is certainly noteworthy and ironic that an empirical research journal would dismiss the role of data in forming public policy and it raises some interesting questions about the use of empirical research in formulating law.

This tension between research and law is debated in a new book from New York University Press called What is Parenthood? While the primary focus of the book is the legal relevance of biology and gender in an age of modern families, the question about the use of empirical data in forming family law looms large.

The state is thoroughly entrenched in the business of declaring who is and isn’t a parent. In the years ahead, as the use of reproductive technology grows and family forms become more diverse, this will continue to become an important legal question. While a strong argument can be made that family law is preoccupied with the dissolution of families, many legal theorists see the law as a proactive agent in shaping the future of families. The principles on which these legal reforms are based are of central importance.

Read here

Naked Before the State: To make matters very much worse, the parens patriae power has recently received an enormous boost from another feature of the contraceptive society: same-sex “marriage.” Though most people have not yet realized it, the advent of same-sex marriage has transformed marriage from a pre-political institution conferring “divine and human rights,” as the Roman jurist Modestinus put it, into a mere legal construct at the gift and disposal of the state. The legal terrain has thus changed dramatically, along with the cultural—something I have tried to show in a little book called Nation of Bastards. The family is ceasing to be what the Universal Declaration of Human Rights confesses it to be, viz., “the natural and fundamental group unit of society.”

Replaced by a kaleidoscope of transient sexual and psychological configurations, which serve chiefly to make children of adults and adults of children, the declining family is ceding enormous tracts of social and legal territory to the state. At law, parent-child relationships are losing their a priori status and privilege. Crafty fools ask foolish fools, “What harm does same-sex marriage do to your marriage, or to your family?” The truthful answer is: Same-sex marriage makes us all chattels of the state, because the state, in presuming to define the substance rather than the accidents of marriage, has made marriage itself a state artifact.

Those who have trouble connecting the dots here—which lamentably includes many defenders of the traditional institution—should take time to consider the fact that the new “inclusive” definition, in striking procreation from the purview of marriage, has left both parents and children without a lawful institution that respects and guarantees their natural rights to each other.

Opening up marriage in principle to non-generative unions really means closing it in principle to the inter-generational interests on which it has always been based. From now on, the handling of those interests will be entirely dependent, legally speaking, upon the good graces of the state. Every citizen will stand naked before the state, unclothed by his most fundamental community, unbuffered by any mediating institution with its own inherent rights. Nor should it be overlooked that, what the state has the power to define, it has the power to define again and again, and even to dispense with.

Admittedly, even the state has not yet fully connected the dots, but that is happening with remarkable rapidity, as concurrent moves in education demonstrate. States and international agencies are increasingly prone to argue that children have the right to a state-directed education and that this right must be protected by the state against the interference of parents. The logic is not difficult to follow: If marriage is procreative, it is also educative; but if it is not procreative, it is not educative either—educative rights and responsibilities are up for grabs, and it is the state that will do the grabbing. The pillar that is the family appears to have cracked nearly through.

2   “The impossibility of gay marriage and the threat of biopolitical control”, by John Milbank (excerpts), ABC

The push for gay marriage is not about gay rights or natural justice, but the extension of a form of biopolitical tyranny. It is part of the modern state's drive to assume control over reproduction

During the course of recent debates in the British Parliament over the proposed legalisation of gay marriage, it has gradually become apparent that the proposal itself is impossible. For legislators have recognised that it would be intolerable to define gay marriage in terms equivalent to "consummation," or to permit "adultery" as legitimate ground for gay divorce.

Many may welcome such a development as yet a further removal of state intrusion into our private lives, but that would be to fail to consider all the implications. In the first place, it would end public recognition of the importance of marriage as a union of sexual difference. But the joining together and harmonisation of the asymmetrical perspectives of the two sexes are crucial both to kinship relations over time and to social peace. Where the reality of sexual difference is denied, then it gets reinvented in perverse ways – just as the over-sexualisation of women and the confinement of men to a marginalised machismo.

Secondly, it would end the public legal recognition of a social reality defined in terms of the natural link between sex and procreation. In direct consequence, the natural children of heterosexual couples would then be only legally their children if the state decided that they might be legally "adopted" by them.

And this, I argue, reveals what is really at issue here. There was no demand for "gay marriage" and this has nothing to do with gay rights. Instead, it is a strategic move in the modern state's drive to assume direct control over the reproduction of the population, bypassing our interpersonal encounters. This is not about natural justice, but the desire on the part of biopolitical tyranny to destroy marriage and the family as the most fundamental mediating social institution.

Heterosexual exchange and reproduction has always been the very "grammar" of social relating as such. The abandonment of this grammar would thus imply a society no longer primarily constituted by extended kinship, but rather by state control and merely monetary exchange and reproduction.

From this it follows that we should not re-define birth as essentially artificial and disconnected from the sexual act – which by no means implies that each and every sexual act must be open to the possibility of procreation, only that the link in general should not be severed. The price for this severance is surely the commodification of birth by the market, the quasi-eugenic control of reproduction by the state, and the corruption of the parent-child relation to one of a narcissistic self-projection.

3   “The Freedom to Marry – a Liberal Value that Conservatives Should Reject”, by Jennifer Thieme, The Daily Caller (excerpt)

A few months ago, a new group launched called “Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry.” This is a group sponsored by a larger organization called “Freedom to Marry.” The objective of these groups is to promote gay marriage.

These young conservatives have been beguiled by leftist language, and my conclusion is that they must not be familiar with the philosophical underpinnings of true conservatism. They wrongly believe that “the freedom to marry is not a partisan value and is consistent with basic conservative values of responsibility and community, limited government and individual freedom.” But the so-called “freedom to marry” is not a conservative value. It’s a liberal value, plain and simple. Here’s how it works. It’s a bit complex (which is one reason people on my side of the debate have trouble defending it), but I’ll break it down into the smallest segments I can:

“Gay marriage” really means “genderless marriage.” Genderless marriage means references to gender must be removed from the law. Words like “bride,” “groom,” “husband,” “wife,” “mother,” and “father” must all be replaced with genderless terms such as “partner,” “party,” and “parent.” This happened in Canada when the Canadian government redefined marriage in 2005. For example, the term “natural parent” was replaced with “legal parent.” Recently the French government made it clear that it’ll be removing the terms “father” and “mother” from the French legal code in order to accommodate gay (genderless) marriage.

By replacing natural bonds with artificial bonds, we’ll be allowing the government to decide who counts as a parent, instead of biology. This will result in a significant amount of government intrusion into our lives. Legal challenges for the control of children will rise and we will see example after example of natural bonds being disregarded. Genderless marriage has already harmed people in places where it is legal; I’ve discussed a couple of actual cases here and here.

Most people do not realize how many legal changes must occur in order for marriage to accommodate gay couples. Some conservatives hope that by supporting gay marriage, they’ll strengthen marriage and families. But only marriage based on and respecting natural bonds can do this. Genderless marriage cannot, since it requires artificial, state-defined bonds. By definition, genderless marriage has already increased the scope of the government just by coming into existence. And it must be clear to anybody that requiring all of society to replace natural bonds with artificial bonds harms the family structure — it does not strengthen it.

4  Amicus Curiae brief submitted by Coalition for the Protection of Marriage (excerpt)

Man-woman marriage protects rights in family relations against the state’s impulse to act as if it were the source and dispenser of those rights and hence to infringe them

A genderless marriage regime is inimical to the concept of natural parenthood, as Canada’s experiment demonstrates. It is likewise necessarily inimical to the concept of the natural family as an institutional buffer between family members and the state and as the situs of rights on which the state cannot impinge. Genderless marriage “is nothing more than a legal construct. Its roots run no deeper than positive law. It therefore cannot present itself to the state as the bearer of independent rights and responsibilities, as older or more basic than the state itself. Indeed, it is a creature of the state.” As a consequence, a genderless marriage regime “de-naturalize(s) the family by rendering familial relationships, in their entirety, expressions of law. But relationship of that sort – bled as they are of the stuff of social tradition and experience – are no longer family relationships at all. They are rather policy relationships, defined and imposed by the state.” The chilling consequence is that, by displacing man-woman marriage, genderless marriage

“does away with the very institution – the only institution we have – that exists precisely in order to support the natural family and to affirm its independence from the state. In doing so, it effectively makes every citizen a ward of the state, by turning his or her most fundamental human connections into legal constructs at the state’s gift and disposal.”

5.  “It’s all about the children, not selfish adults”, by Margaret Somerville (excerpt)

Marriage is a compound right in both international and domestic law: it's the right to marry and to found a family. Giving the latter right to same-sex couples necessarily negates the rights of all children with respect to their biological origins and natural families, not just those born into same-sex marriages. The Canadian Civil Marriage Act 2005, which legalised same-sex marriage, demonstrates this in providing that in certain legislation the term "natural parent" is to be replaced by "legal parent". In short, the adoption exception — that who is a child's parent is established by legal fiat, not biological connection — becomes the norm for all children.

Read also:  gentlemind's submission to the Same Sex Marriage Bill Committee
 

A reply to Sirpa Pietikäinen and Sophie in ‘t Veld

Why can’t those nasty conservatives not just be reverently silent when the EU Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) solemnly pontificates on “LGBT discrimination”? Why can’t they stop using critical thought??

“I respect conservative Catholic groups’ freedom of opinion, including on women’s and LGBT rights—but I don’t appreciate their way of criticising research even before it is published. In any case, they receive very little attention, even from centre-right MEPs.”

“I find it sad that these groups find any reason to criticise the work of the Fundamental Rights Agency whenever it promotes the rights of women or LGBT people. Their knee-jerk reflex shows that this survey is highly needed, and that unfortunately, equality still has a lot of opponents.”

Jennifer Roback Morse of The Ruth Institute defends traditional marriage to young people

Jennifer Roback Morse, an economist, rejects the notion that increasing support for homosexual marriage among young people means that its legalization is somehow inevitable. She is founder and president of The Ruth Institute, a project of the National Organization for Marriage Education Fund that promotes traditional marriage to college students and other young adults. The arguments for marriage can work with that group, she said, because they’ve never heard them before. Presented well, the case is “extremely powerful.”

Do you focus on college students because they seem to be shifting in favor of homosexual marriage?

When I started The Ruth Institute in 2008, Prop. 8 was going on around me in California, but I have always wanted to talk to young people about the whole range of issues, including the fallout from no-fault divorce, cohabitation, sex outside of marriage.

Certainly young people have been swept away with the argument that gay marriage is inevitable. Also, they know kids who are openly gay or openly lesbian and they want to be nice to their friends. But that doesn’t in any way diminish the case for man-woman marriage, that the essential public purpose of marriage is to attach mothers and fathers to their children, and to one another. That is still true no matter how much you love your gay neighbor or your lesbian classmate.

Read here

The controversial bill to redefine marriage will be debated again by MPs on the floor of the House of Commons on 20 and 21 May as they consider amendments to the proposals at report stage and third reading.

A majority of MPs voted in favour of a second reading in February despite more Conservative MPs voting against David Cameron's bill than for it. If the bill is once again backed by MPs it will move on to the House of Lords where it is scheduled for second reading on 3 June. The approach to the bill in the House of Lords could be very different from that in the Commons. A ComRes survey earlier in the year indicated many Lords believed the proposals for same-sex marriage should be delayed until it was clearly established, for example in a national referendum, to what extent the public actually support it.

More recent polls suggest that a significant public majority consider the issue to be non-priority and potentially socially divisive at a time when tackling the economy and other headline issues are much more important. Among those voters who supported the Conservatives at the last general election, 46 per cent wanted same-sex marriage legislation dropped, with only 22 per cent in favour.

Following the recent local elections David Cameron has been widely criticised both within his own party and by the general public for being out of touch with ordinary voters. UKIP, which officially opposes redefining marriage, saw a dramatic increase in support to some 25 per cent of the national vote. Gay marriage was a notable factor in this landmark political development.

Read here

Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, said that Gay marriage laws have created a "real sense of anger in England" ahead of a parliamentary debate on the proposals next week.

He told BBC1's Question Time: "There was no huge demand for this and we didn't need to spend a lot of parliamentary time and upset vast numbers of people in order to do this.

" I have just never felt that this is what we should be focusing on. This change does redefine marriage. For millions and millions of people who are married, the meaning of marriage changes.

"There is a real sense of anger among many people who are married that any government thinks it has the ability to change the definition of an institution like marriage."

However, a spokesman for David Cameron rejected the claim that too much time had been spent on the issue.

He said: "The Prime Minister thinks that the right process is being followed. The government has set out the legislative programme and it is the right one.

"The Prime Minister's position is that he is a big believer in marriage, that's why he thinks gay people should be able to get married too."

On Thursday, David Cameron appeared ready to appease some of the 134 Conservative MPs who voted against his proposals last time by promising to look at extending civil partnerships to all couples in future.

Read here

There is bi-partisan outrage over the widening scope of the revelation that the powerful Internal Revenue Service has been targeting groups said to be conservative for the past couple of years. But the IRS target list was much wider than that, and the agency’s treatment of these groups and citizens is both shocking and disturbing.

The EU's largest-ever survey of hate crimes and discrimination against LGBT people claims that they labour under a terrible burden. But the figures don’t support the conclusions.

Former HM Inspector of Constabulary, Lord Dear, will lead a vote against the Government’s same-sex marriage Bill on 3 June.

If he secures a majority, it will be the end of David Cameron’s controversial Bill to redefine marriage.

Lord Dear has previously defeated the Government in the Lords over free speech and 42-day detention without charge.
 
In a letter to fellow Peers, Lord Dear said: “the Government is using its raw power to press ahead as fast as possible.

“The political parties have no mandate from the public to bring it forward: the redefinition of marriage was not included in any party manifesto.

“The official consultation process massaged the results to downplay opposition and has been widely dismissed as a sham. 

“The House of Commons process has been marked by guillotined debates and undue pressure from party hierarchies on individual MPs.

Lord Dear said the Lords have the authority to vote down a Government Bill “when the executive is clearly acting with no democratic mandate and without regard to the proper constitutional processes.”

Before the Bill reaches the Lords, MPs must wrap up their consideration of the Bill on Monday and Tuesday.

Read here

British law and culture are deeply conflicted when it comes to matters sexual. There is the obvious conflict of the more ‘liberal’ and the more ‘traditional’ views of any restriction on sexual activity after what is now called ‘the sexual revolution’ of the 1960s. Mary Whitehouse led largescale protests against the sexualisation of society away from the basic Christian norms that had been in place for a very long time. In literature and the London theatre sexual activity became standard fare, the ‘Office of the Lord Chamberlain’ was closed, and sex outside marriage lost any taboo. Homosexuality between consenting adults in private was, rightly, decriminalized, but that as we now know was but the start of a campaign against what schoolchildren are now taught as ‘heteronormativity’.

‘Women’s Lib’ urged women to ‘burn their bra’ and get out into the dodgem cars of casual sex and enjoy themselves, just like the men – and the other side of the feminist movement campaigned against the view of women as ‘sex objects.’ No-fault divorce followed, with the equalization of property rights between couples, and now divorce rates are high and single motherhood as legitimate an option as marriage, formal or informal.

The nuclear family became demonized by feminism as driving women crazy at home, a terrible prison, and women also were expected to go out to work out of economic necessity even if they wanted to be mothers at home. The state removed the tax break of ‘the married man’s allowance’. The age of the internet added to the potential for and access to sex in all forms: internet dating and also porn of all kinds, sites for quick-fire casual sex and upmarket anonymised orgies. In biblical terms, a respectable paganisation of sex arrived and is in full swing: use of the body is now detached from moral shaping. Abortion on demand on an industrial scale is an accepted form of contraception.

But what of children, those ‘under age’? Rowan Williams’ timely book Lost Icons discussed the sexualisation of children through clothing, TV programmes, DVDs and the web. Children are being inducted into sexual awareness very much earlier than previous generations, and girls especially are finding themselves needing perfect physical sexual form. The dangerous phenomenon of ‘sexting’ photos to friends grows, beyond parental control – a powerful outcome of the internet and associated technologies.

But the ‘Fraser Guidelines’ undermine the age limit for sexual intercourse by allowing doctors and school nurses to give contraception to ‘under age’ children, who consent to sex, and to keep this from parents.

So the state gives two contradictory messages. Conflict is also seen in the high-profile prosecution of geriatric northern BBC comedians for sex abuse in the past, compared with the very low profile, reluctant, embarrassed, prosecution of Asian sex gangs preying on young girls, groomed into ‘consent’. Again, de-Christianisation of our social morality has been at a real cost. No wonder children are confused – and at increased risk.

The newspapers are full today of the news that scientists in the US state of Oregon have produced embryonic stem cells (ESCs) using the same cloning technology (somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT)) that created Dolly the sheep.

The timing could not be more urgent. It has now been revealed that the very next day, Monday 3 June, the House of Lords will have an opportunity to vote down the whole same-sex marriage Bill.

This vote against the Bill is being led by independent Peer, Lord Dear, a highly respected former HM Chief Inspector of Police. If it succeeds, the Government’s Bill will have suffered a decisive defeat.

We believe it is possible to win this vote in the Lords, and we would encourage Christians throughout the nation to pray for that result.

However – and we cannot stress this enough – if the vote does not succeed there will still be other opportunities to derail the Bill at later stages in the Lords.

Monday 3 June could be the day when the Government’s plans are decisively defeated, so yes it’s an important moment in the campaign. But if we are not successful, don’t be alarmed, there is still all to play for.

With so much at stake, please will you pray for marriage in our nation?

Please pray:
• That marriage will not be redefined, and that it will be promoted in society for the good of all.
• That on Monday 3 June a majority of Peers will vote against the bill to redefine marriage.
• For the Coalition for Marriage group as it campaigns to defend the historic meaning of marriage.
• For parliamentarians and others in public life to have the courage to stand up for their convictions.
• For the news media, that they would report the issue widely, fairly, and accurately.
• That the consequences of redefining marriage would be publicly known and properly discussed.
• That people would not face discrimination, in the workplace or elsewhere, because of their sincere beliefs about marriage.

Open prayer is encouraged, but this written prayer may also be of help:

Heavenly Father,

We thank you for the gift of marriage which you established at the dawn of time, to be a blessing for all generations throughout the earth, down through the ages.

We pray that you would fill each and every marriage with your love and grace, and that every husband and wife would know the joy that comes from sharing and giving.

We thank you for establishing marriage to be a secure and stable environment for raising children.

We pray for all those who do not enjoy those blessings, remembering that you are a father to the orphan and a husband to the widow.

We pray, as you have commanded us, for those in positions of civil authority.

We ask that you would have mercy on our nation as the Government seeks to redefine marriage which is so precious in your sight.

We pray that our government will act with wisdom and righteousness, upholding marriage as the voluntary union of one man to one woman for life, for the good of all people.

We pray for our nation, as our government seeks to redefine marriage. We pray that these plans would fail.

And we pray for ourselves, that we would speak out in support of marriage with gentleness and kindness, but also with courage and confidence.

In the name of Christ Jesus our Lord we pray.

Amen.
 

A review will consider whether all couples could choose civil partnerships over marriage, under Maria Miller's plans.

MPs are seeking to re-write the same-sex marriage Bill next week to open up civil partnerships to heterosexual couples for the first time.

After initially resisting such a move, ministers have now agreed to offer a review of whether couples should be given the choice to formalise their relationships through marriage or as civil partners, regardless of their sexuality.

Mrs Miller, the Equalities Minister and Culture Secretary, said the main purpose of the Bill was to “extend” marriage to same-sex couples.

“Questions have been raised about whether we should also extend civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples,” she said. “There are strong views on both sides of this debate, and we have listened to those views.

“We are therefore offering the House the opportunity to have a review of this area, rather than legislating now without the required evidence.”

The minister has proposed an amendment to the Bill offering a full review of civil partnerships, which would take place after gay marriage had become legal.

Read here