Women and Equalities Minister Maria Miller has announced in Parliament the government’s plans to push through legislation on same-sex ‘marriage.’
Mrs Miller faced a barrage of questions over the issue in the House of Commons. A number of MPs voiced strong opposition over the government’s handling of the proposed changes.
“Sham”
Many of the concerns raised were over the consultation process. Prior to the parliamentary debate, Conservative MP David Burrowes labelled the government’s consultation “a sham.”
Over 600,000 people signed a petition supporting the current legal definition of marriage as between one man and one woman. The Coalition for Marriage, the organisation which drafted the petition, submitted the signatures before the consultation deadline but these data have been ignored by the government.
The consultation was also open to abuse, since the form was anonymous and could be filled in by people anywhere in the world, as many times as they liked. The majority of the 228,000 responses received were from these forms.
Mr Burrowes said: “If they want to rely on those figures it is wholly disingenuous. It makes the consultation a sham in terms of justifying this on the back of numerical support, given that 500,000 people were ignored and they have accepted all-comers from around the globe.”
“The Government doesn’t have a mandate to proceed and the consultation raises more doubts and questions about the public support for going forward.
“Different polls have been misappropriated and now the Government is mis-applying its own consultation responses. They don’t have the authority to do this.”
Objections
Similar objections to the government’s actions were expressed in the House. In particular, issue was taken with the fact that legislating for same-sex ‘marriage’ did not appear in the Conservative party manifesto at the last election.
Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Simon Hughes, highlighted this as well as the fact that the plans were not part of the Coalition agreement.
Tory MP Stewart Jackson said the legislative plans were “a constitutional outrage and a disgrace.”
Churches
Ahead of the parliamentary debate, David Cameron had already announced his intention to support same-sex ‘marriages’ in churches. Opponents were quick to point out that the government consultation promised that no religious institution would be permitted to participate.
Mrs Miller announced a “quadruple lock” intended to ensure that churches which do not wish to conduct same-sex ‘marriages’ would not be forced to.
But Conservative MP Anne McIntosh drew attention to similar protections for churches in Denmark which were later ruled as illegal.
Side-tracked
Andrea Williams, Chief Executive of Christian Concern, responded:
“There is massive strength of feeling against redefining marriage on the benches of Parliament and amongst the public. People are rightly upset that the government is ploughing on with redefining marriage despite such strong opposition.
“The government’s talk of encouraging commitment in society rings hollow in light of its broken commitment not to legislate for same-sex ‘marriage’ in churches. We also know from our experience in the European Court that the British Government is certainly no great defender of Christian freedoms.
“But we must be careful not to get side-tracked by the government’s attempts to make this a religious freedom issue. There are huge issues at stake in redefining marriage which will affect the whole of society”.
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