Anglican Mainstream

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 John Bingham, Telegraph

Hopes of a “fast-track” solution to the Church of England’s women bishops crisis have been dealt a blow after it emerged there will be no final decision for at least two years.

The Church was left in disarray in November last year after the General Synod threw out plans to admit women to the episcopacy despite overwhelming support among members.

Amid calls for Parliament to intervene, the church leadership set about an urgent drive to come up with a new measure and speed it through its legal hurdles in time to be presented to the next meeting of the Synod in July.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby, made the drive one of his top priorities after taking office in February.

But, following a two-day meeting behind closed doors, the current bishops announced that the new legislation would not be ready in time for the July meeting of Synod.

Instead the Synod will be presented with four basic options – details of which have not yet been published – and asked to discuss them under the supervision of mediators before choosing one.

Read here

At its meeting in York the House of Bishops of the Church of England has committed itself to publishing new ways forward to enable women to become bishops.
 
In its discussion on the issue of women in the episcopate, the House received and approved for publication the report from the Working Group on Women in the Episcopate which was set up on 11 December to prepare new legislative proposals following the General Synod's rejection of the last legislation on 20 November 2012.

The report of the Working Group presented four new options as a way forward and proposed that the General Synod should consider those options at its meeting in July. The Working Group also proposed a timetable which would involve the legislation starting its formal stages in the Synod in November and receiving Final Approval in 2015.

The House of Bishops has agreed that the report of the Working Group should be published with a separate report from the Archbishops on behalf of the House setting out the House's recommendations to the General Synod.  The House has also asked the Business Committee of the General Synod to arrange for a substantial amount of time to be available at the General Synod in July for facilitated conversations in small groups before the Synod comes to a decision on the way forward.

The House also approved the necessary changes in its standing orders to ensure the attendance of senior women clergy at its meetings. These changes were proposed following the House's decision at its meeting in December to ensure the participation of senior female clergy in its meetings until such time as there are six female members of the house, following the admission of women to the episcopate.

Read here

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

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?

Read here

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.

Read here

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

by Andrew Walker and Ryan Anderson, CitizenLink

The media claim we don’t exist. OK, that’s a slight exaggeration. But after all, we’re Millennials, born during the Reagan administration. We’re supposed to be of the generation that is embracing same-sex marriage in droves.

Instead, we’re standing strong on upholding the truth about what marriage is.

We’ve been asked—repeatedly—whether the position we’re promoting is pointless. Are we willing to endure cultural scorn for holding to a position as supposedly outmoded as natural marriage?

Politicos and pundits offer hyperbolic missives on how conservatives are losing young Americans, who are likely to be more libertarian on social issues. The preferred talking point is to assert the demise of the opposition; Same-sex marriage is “inevitable.”

A justly revered conservative columnist, George F. Will, has said twice on ABC’s “This Week” that opposition to same-sex marriage is a dying trait. “Quite literally,” he said, “the opposition to gay marriage is dying. It’s old people.”

Tweet to Mr. Will: Reports of our death have been greatly exaggerated. #NotDeadYet
 
Every generation will witness to the truth that marriage—the union of a man and woman, husband and wife, father and mother—is the very institution that determines whether our civilization stands or falls. Americans will not stay silent on cherishing and promoting this truth.

The most fundamental unit of society, marriage is founded on the anthropological truth that men and women are different and complementary, the biological fact that the union of a man and woman also creates new life, and the social reality that children need a mom and a dad.

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),

Read the rest of this entry »

The Times reports that more Tory MPs voted against the Prime Minister than lined up alongside him in support of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill. The measure secured its third reading yesterday evening by 357 votes to 153, with 129 Tories against, including 12 ministers and five whips, and 118 in favour.

One MP said the past two weeks could prove terminal to Mr Cameron’s leadership. “Our chances of winning the next election are evaporating,” the MP said.

Peers said there appeared to be a comfortable majority in the Lords for the Bill, but opponents made clear that they would try to mount a protracted effort to derail it. Opposition will be led by Lord Dear, a crossbencher and former chief constable of West Midlands Police, who may break with Lords convention by urging peers to oppose the Bill’s second reading despite overwhelming support for it in the Commons.

He said that he might table a “fatal motion” that would seek to kill off the Bill amid “considerable concern” among peers. Some were uneasy about the hasty way it was ushered through the Commons, he said, while others objected to the concept of gay marriage altogether. “I’ve seen enough of this Government launching ideas and then doing U-turns because they haven’t been thought through,” he said. “This is probably the prime example. There’s an argument to say: call it off now, send it back and do it properly.”

Mr Cameron’s attempts to build bridges with Tory activists with a round-robin e-mail earlier this week left many unimpressed.Geoffrey Vero, president of Michael Gove’s Surrey Heath Conservative Association, said that he “wasn’t particularly impressed”. “It’s all words — let’s see what the action’s going to be,” he said. “He’s got to reconnect with his party. We are the ones who do the grunt work to get them elected [but] not only are we taken for granted, I think we are ignored.”

Read here

Read also:  127 Tory MPs oppose the same sex marriage bill, but it still passes the Commons, Peter Hoskin, Conservative Home

By David Baker, Christian Today

By Sam Webb, Mailonline

A French right-wing historian shot himself dead yesterday in front of hundreds of tourists at the altar of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris in protest at the introduction of gay marriage in France.

Dominique Venner, 78, is said to have walked calmly past the crowds before taking out an automatic pistol and shooting himself in the head.

It came three days after President Francois Hollande signed gay marriage into law despite the issue proving hugely controversial.

Read here

In the course of the debates in the House of Commons on the Same Sex Couples Bill, comparison was made to issues of slavery and of race.  These depend on the assumption that same-sex attraction and race are both unalterable matters of genetic inheritance. This assumption has been significantly challenged, most recently by the publication 'Beyond Critique', available on the AM Website.

Below is one example of this comparison

Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con): We are in an extraordinary situation for what is the Third Reading of a Bill that redefines marriage, and I never thought our Government would have done this.

There was no clear manifesto commitment, no coalition agreement on it and no Green Paper—there was just a sham consultation—and there are no significant amendments to the Bill beyond the civil partnerships review. We have had programme motions that have denied all MPs the opportunity to scrutinise the Bill in detail. Consciences have been constrained. Indeed, a recent private poll of MPs showed that at least one third of Members did not believe they had a free vote on Second Reading. Let us see what happens on Third Reading, but that will no doubt create a concern in the other place when it comes to discuss the Bill on 3 June, if it passes its Third Reading tonight.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for their diligence in Committee. If we had not served on the Committee, there would have been almost no scrutiny of the Bill at all.

Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con): We find ourselves in the unusual situation that none of the political parties put this in their manifesto. Does my hon. Friend agree that the other place will have complete legitimacy if it chooses to reject the Bill because the Salisbury convention should not apply here?

Read the rest of this entry »

Lords should have confidence to reject same-sex marriage bill at first vote London, 21 May 2013: Peers should have confidence to vote against the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill at its first House of Lords debate due on 3 June, says leading pro-family organisation the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) www.spuc.org.uk

SPUC was commenting after the House of Commons voted in favour of the bill this evening by 366 to 161. All amendments which sought to limit the damage that the bill threatens to wreak on society were rejected. Previously MPs voted by 400 to 175 for the bill.

Paul Tully, SPUC’s general-secretary, commented: “The fact that the government failed to increase the proportion of MPs supporting the measure indicates the weakness of their case for this bill.

“The consequences of allowing the bill to pass are grave, most significantly the effective abolition of real marriage in English law. Marriage will be redefined as a genderless institution. The link between marriage and child-rearing will be seriously eroded. Significantly, Greg Mulholland MP yesterday called upon Parliament to abolish marriage in English law and replace it with a vague and arbitrarily-invented ‘civil union’. Charlotte Leslie MP defined marriage as ‘a social construct’, when in fact it is a building-block of society, and the common patrimony of humanity. And today, Kate Green, the Labour front-bencher, even questioned the existence of any fundamental English law of marriage", said Mr Tully. Read the rest of this entry »

PRESS RELEASE FROM: The Coalition for Marriage

As the same-sex marriage Bill progressed from Commons to the Lords, campaign director of the Coalition for Marriage, Colin Hart, said: “This Bill is no longer about redefining marriage, it’s now about wrecking marriage.

“The addition of Labour’s £4bn idea to open up civil partnerships to heterosexuals proves what we’ve always said, this Bill will unravel and undermine marriage.

 “A civil partnerships free-for-all will create two-tier marriage, with the option of marriage-lite for millions of unwed couples.

 “If he thinks he got a rough ride in the Commons, just wait for the Lords. It will be a long, protracted battle which will only remind the voters that the Government isn’t listening.

“Cameron once said he’s a ‘marriage man’. No, he’s a marriage wrecker.”

From BBC News

The House of Commons has voted to allow gay marriage in England and Wales, despite 161 MPs opposing the government's plans.

Several Tory MPs spoke against the proposals, which have caused tensions in the party, but the Labour and Lib Dem leaderships backed them.

The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill now goes before the House of Lords.

David Cameron hopes it will become law soon, with the first ceremonies taking place by next summer.

Tensions between Downing Street and grassroots Conservatives have been exacerbated by the same-sex marriage proposals.

There is anger over comments reportedly made by Conservative co-chairman Lord Feldman.

Read here

Third Reading May 21          Ayes 366  Noes 161 

Second reading February 5 Ayes 400, Noes 175

Majority reduced by 20 votes at Third Reading