Marriage: Back on the agenda. Photo credit: Goran Ratković
Christian campaigners have launched a petition to persuade UK Prime Minister David Cameron to abandon his pledge to support gay marriage. The Coalition for Marriage (C4M), which is backed by former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey, has already contacted 175,000 supporters to rally behind the idea of marriage as a “voluntary union for life of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others”, reported The Telegraph. Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone is expected to launch a public consultation in March on how to legislate for same-sex marriage.
The topic is also making headlines on the other side of the Atlantic, after Republican Governor Chris Christie vetoed a bill to legalise gay marriage in New Jersey after it was passed by the State Assembly.
“I don’t support gay marriage in spite of being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I am a Conservative,” PM David Cameron told the Tory party conference in 2011, said The Independent.
Gay marriage will undermine society. Lord Carey came out as a great supporter of marriage in The Daily Mail: “Marriage is the glue that binds our country together. When a couple marries, they are not just joining with one individual, but connecting two families.” But not, it seems, when applied to same-sex couples: “For thousands of years, the union of one man and one woman has been the bedrock of societies across cultures, all around the world,” wrote Lord Carey, warning that any attempt by the government to alter this definition will “fatally weaken” the institution. Lord Carey suggested that allowing same-sex couples to marry may “encourage” religious discrimination and will mean schools will be “forced” to teach children about gay marriage.
“Our strong advice to anyone who disagrees with same-sex marriage is not to get married to someone of the same sex,” said Stonewall chief executive Ben Summerskill in response to the Coalition for Marriage petition, reported the BBC.
Carey confusion. Martin Robbins gave a withering response to Lord Carey’s article in a Guardian-hosted blog: “If you’re heterosexual and you want to get married, your rights will not be affected in the slightest by gay marriage. It will have no conceivable impact on you, your children, or wider society.” Robbins took particular issue with Lord Carey’s argument that it is not the government’s place to alter the definition of marriage: “This is such an unholy and inconsistent mess of an argument that’s very hard to untangle it. Carey wants to invoke the legal definition of marriage as immutable, while simultaneously arguing that nobody has the right to define marriage.”
Carey contradiction. An Independent editorial suggested that Carey’s Mail piece could, in fact, be seen as a good argument for gay marriage: “In penning what is effectively a paean to marriage – as a force for family and social stability – he only reinforces the arguments for extending the privilege to gay couples.” The editorial pointed out that five European countries already recognize same-sex marriage, and others are heading in the same direction: “The [UK] Government should take the only enlightened, modern and just course – and stick to its guns.”
“We cannot allow social engineering to take place with such Orwellian results that we say ‘parent one’ and ‘parent two’ instead of mother and father,” said Lord Brennan, Tory peer, launching the Coalition for Marriage, reported The Telegraph.
Gay marriage: Family values. “In the intensifying debate over same-sex marriage, what I sometimes find hardest to understand is why so many opponents don’t see gay people’s longing to be wedded as the fundamentally conservative, lavishly complimentary desire it is. It says marriage is worth aspiring to and fighting for,” wrote Frank Bruni in a New York Times opinion piece. Bruni pointed out that for years homosexuals were “denounced as sexual libertines who brazenly flouted society’s norms”; but any attempt to meet those norms through gay marriage is rejected by US society and politicians. “The only possible takeaway is that we’re meant to be outliers forevermore, unworthy of the experiences and affirmations accorded others,” said Bruni.