Much as those are terrible examples, the argument you make is kinda anecdotal. How many unmarried heterosexual partnerships end in murder/attempted murder compared to married partnerships would be a more appropriate question to ask. Has there been a study?

This article is unashamedly heterophobic.

Great post. @1I don’t think the argument is that heterosexual partnerships are more likely to end in murder/attempted murder but that it is awful and plain wrong to imply that homosexual partnerships/murders are more likely to end in murder/attempted murder? (Don’t want to put words in your mouth Pennie but I assume that’s what your argument is?)
Anyone know where Stephen Gately got married btw? Civil partnership doesn’t exist yet in Ireland (they have introduced a bill, but I don’t think it’s in effect yet, and in any case it does not go far enough)

No, I don’t think that’s the point here, Nick [1] – civil partnership as an institution has been tainted by Stephen Gately’s death according to Moir’s, aherm, ‘analysis’.

Needless to say Moir has no feelings for the bereaved family since she seems hell bent on pushing her entirely predictable little-england agenda (safe in the knowledge that most of the Fail’s frightened readership will lap up her every melodramatic utterance).

Having said that I think family IS the most important social institution, but what constitutes ‘family’ should not be shoe-horned into some kind of ancient biblical formulation that Moir and her ilk seem so attached to.

Nick, prattory, can you not just give it a rest, just this once?

Wow, the article by David Wilson is a shocker! And he’s a Professor at Birmingham University no less. Academic standards are slipping in the West Midlands! Someone should write to the Daily Mail about it…

“I suggest that before we start signing up to the drooling Tory family fetish, we all have a good, hard think about what a ‘traditional, stable’ family really looks like – and interrogate just what we mean by “natural”.”

Well, speaking from experience all my local friends grew up in the 80s and 90s in married two-parent families. No violence, deaths etc. Only one divorce. Personally I’m glad I have two married parents who have been together since before I was born. Horribly old-fashioned of me I know but I’ve done rather well out of the arrangement.

@1 @2 I’m not trying to make an argument that more violence occurs in heterosexual, married partnerships. I’m merely pointing out that where two instances of tragic early death, painful but without violence, are apparently enough to tar the entire institution of civil partnership, the institution of marriage is beyond reproach, even though two violent domestic murders happen in this country every week, on average.

And Richard, I’m sure your family life was lovely. Mine was alright, too, and my parents were married for most of it – although my sisters and I are happier now they are divorced. Neither of our experiences, however, have any bearing on the actual point I was actually trying to make.

Statistically speaking, most people still have experience of being part of a married, heterosexual family, either as children themselves or as adults. This will also mean, statistically speaking, that numerically more people have both good AND experiences within heterosexual, married families.

I always knew the Daily Mail was a pile of scribble. Use it for your chips and give me the Guardian any day!

I once drank twenty eight pints of best bitter and half a bottle of whiskey, I ended up in hospital in ICU as the doctor said I was drowning in fluids.

He is reported to have been pissed out of his skull and died,

Bloody hell some people can make a story out of anything

Sorry, but by the end of this post you descend into exactly the kind of overblown hyperbole that you complain about at the beginning. How is “Tell that to Sally Sinclair, Kate Ellerbeck and Siobhan Kearney. No wait, you can’t!” any less emotive and hyperbolic than the Daily Mail article you link to? Or, for that matter, describing Tim Montgomerie as having a “drooling Tory family fetish”?

Obviously, your general view is more ‘to each their own’ than the tone of this post suggests. I think that’s most people’s general view. In fact, it’s almost definitely Tim Montgomerie’s view. Had you said that, no problem. But you didn’t, you decided that the best way to combat a horrible homophobic rant was to fire back exactly the same kind of emotive and baseless nonsense, and that’s really disappointing.

@12 Stu
But it can’t escape you (well, it looks like it did…) that Laurie is simply underlying a paradox – showing what emotive, prejudiced and baseless nonsense looks like – so she’s offering an example (and very effectively, in my opinon) of how nonsensical it would be like if thrown in the other direction.

finally, a post on mysoginy that i can whole heartedly agree with. Great article laurie.

I think those criticising lauries more annecdotal tendencies here, and the emotional element, are ignoring that this is a criticism of the claim that marriages are a huge good while positive civil partnerships are a myth.

View this post as it’s intended, an indictment of those that ignore the bad eggs in the ‘traditional’ family while, not only just over exemplifying those bad in civil partnerships or single parent families as proof of their total lack of worth, but also actively distorting tragedies in to a sick untruth to ‘prove’ their bigoted prejudices.

bah, misogyny i meant. Damn phone dictionary fail