Lies, Sex and Marriage

The Tory modernisers tell us that the party must change to persuade voters that we are not the nasty lot portrayed by the BBC, the Guardian and the rest of the left wing media. The campaign to paint us in the nasty corner was highly effective and one to which the Tories sadly had no answer when it started after we crashed out of the EMU. It seems to me it all began with the lie pushed by Alistair Campbell, he of the piss poor bagpipe playing skills, that John Major tucked his shirts into his underpants. In order to detoxify the party we have had to embrace all sorts of things including, until it became obvious to all that the Labour way of running the economy was batty, Labour's spending plans. Amongst other changes we abandoned our perceived anti homosexual stance by supporting the repeal of Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 which had prohibited the intentional promotion of homosexuality in schools. We supported as well the Civil Partnership laws allowing homosexuals to enter into a form of relationship similar in law to marriage. I well remember as a young lawyer being told by one of my partners that homosexuals should be allowed to have the same inheritance rights as married couples. This comment came about because the partner had a barrister friend who lived in a happy and stable relationship with another man who acted in all respects as a wife and had no other occupation and so who on the barrister's sudden death was left impecunious with no right to the barrister's estate, the barrister having died intestate. The Civil Partnership legislation thus makes undoubted sense. We have though now arrived at a point where the modernisers, including Cameron, wish to go further and change the rules of the Established Church so that homosexuals can marry even though the marriage service itself specifically refers to man and woman, husband and wife and procreation. Some of us have a great problem to this day with the way the Church has modernised the beautiful language it inherited from our forebears by making what was poetry mundane and thus diminishing the stature of the Church. To go further and to allow marriage between a couple of the same sex is to my mind a step too far and must be resisted. Although it is probably not an issue which exercises most of those who have an historic connection to the Church of England I sense that there will nonetheless be disquiet at the way that yet another of our traditions is being traduced for no good reason. The idea that all discrimination should be abolished is nonsense since it cannot be achieved. Sensible anti discrimination laws should recognise this and allow us our preferences whilst ensuring that our preferences are transparent and not used to diminish another person. Marriage is for men and women whereas civil partnerships are for same sex couples. What is wrong with that?