Idiotic person makes idiotic arguments.

I appreciate she’s good Daily Mail fodder, but her narcissistic desperation to vent such nonsense is an addiction I think we should avoid validating if at all possible.

Didn’t Nadine Dorries “take sex out of marriage” when she had an affair with her friend’s husband?

She is so strongly minded to protect the traditional definition on marriage: she had an affair with her then best friends husband.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/im-a-celebrity/9682415/Nadine-Dorries-Jilted-wife-wants-to-make-Tory-MP-suffer-in-the-jungle.html

Pretty sure there’s going to be plenty of sex happening within any gay marriages that occur, aside from those couple who are like in their 80′s or something. If consummation is such a big deal, just expand it to include tribbing and bumming, problem solved.

What a sophist she is! Hark at her trying to make a very simple issue into something complicated.

I am pretty sure that gay people can have sex….

It’s come as quite a shock to me to realise what these people are still like. The loony and nasty tory/ukip right are absolutely apoplectic about gay marriage. Their spite and hate knows no limits.

More evidence that the hypocritical and publicity hungry Dorries is not fit to represent the people. She is increasingly sounding like a crazed pub bore or taxi driver. Time for her to “spend more time with her family”, eh Dave?

Incidentally why are so many right-wing MPs obsessed with what the public get up to in the bedroom? I think we should be told.

I would agree with Nadine’s first tweet. A civil union should be between any two people who want to have a union to meet the requirements for tax advantages such as inheritance tax. They could be sisters who share a house and want the other to inherit the property. Or it could be brothers where one wants the other to look after his children when he dies without the complications of adoption.

The states’ view of a union should not include anything about sex, gender, colour, religion, disability, relationship, etc. It’s between any two adults and sets out a legal union that the state will recognise for tax purposes and for the other issues such as children/guardianship.

The other aspect of a union between two people is religious. And that is marriage. And that can have any restrictions that religion wants to impose. That’s because it is not the state’s union. So Islam and Judaism won’t allow gays, nor will many Christian sects. But some Christians will, so the gays can go to that sect (Methodists?) to have a religious marriage if they want that.

Some religions allow temporary marriages or marriages between more than two people. They should be allowed as they are purely religious concepts. Such unions though cannot take advantage of any state recognition. So no help with divorce, property, children, etc. To the state, it will be as if no marriage happened.

At the end of the day, why are gays and lesbians so keen on religious marriage. They have the state marriage already. Considering that gays are only tolerated by many religions, I’m surprised that gays want a religious marriage. I’m sure it would have been easier and less confrontational for gays and lesbians to join the Methodists rather than CoE or even to create their own branch of Christianity that allowed gay religious marriage.

And good luck getting Muslims in the UK to accept gay marriage.

@9

How come it’s fine for atheists heterosexuals to get married but when it comes to gays of any religion or none it’s suddenly a massive evil? Oh that’s right you’re a homophobic twat. just like Dorries.

best google search ever. tribbing

No one has responded to one of the tweets:

“Could a sister marry a sister”

Dorries is just a spiteful idiot who hates on people for the fun of it. Hopefully, next election she can be made to go away (if not sooner).

@ 4 That’s the issue. The legal definition of sex is between a man and a woman. There is no legal definition of gay sex. It doesn’t exist. As the law stands gay marriages cannot therefore be consummated and gay people cannot be unfaithful. This is likely to have the effect of removing sex from all marriages (as to do otherwise would be discriminatory) which makes them meaningless. You would be able to marry your sister, why not, if there’s no sex involved ? It’s just another sideways attack on a heterosexual/religious institution, out of all proportion to any need for gay rights – the number of gay people who actually want to get married is tiny, both as an absolute figure and as a proportion of the gay population.

@12

No – incest is illegal.

Where in the name of fuckery did this bullshit about sisters getting married come from?

@14

No-one cares. As far as everyfuckingone knows (even you), gays can have sex. Or why was gay sex illegal for so long?

@ 14 Patently they do hence debates like this and camerons panic over UKIP. Legally there is no definition of gay sex, marriage is a legal contract and all legal contracts define their terms, hence until and unless someone defines it, gay sex cannot logically be incorporated into marriage as it it is currently defined. The fact that you wish it to be otherwise, and that gays physically have sex is neither here nor there. Gay sex wasn’t a crime – “buggery” was.

@15 even

@ 16

What is “buggery” apart from a nasty way to say “gay sex”?

If a definition of gay sex is lacking in law, I’m sure one could be written quite easily.

Besides, is there currently any requirement for consummation? It’s not like the priest comes round in the morning to check the sheets

@18 Yes there is. Non consummation is grounds for annulment. Henry 8th used it for one of his divorces.

I think people are missing the point, which is hardly surprising as the boring legal detail has been obscured by the hysteria on both sides of the debate. Marriage is primarily a legal construct, not a religious one. Curiously agnostics seem to find this point harder to understand than religious people. It was mainly about inheritance lines, property rights and political allegiances for centuries. The religion got bolted on at some point, but marriage existed before any current religion. No one has to go anywhere near a vicar or a church to be legally married and even if you go to a church, you aren’t married until you do the secular legal bit of signing the register.
Gay marriage is about putting gay married couples on the same legal basis as straight ones. What I am saying is that, as the law is currently written, that is not possible, as gay sex does not have any agreed legal definition. Asking the question – “If you define gay sex as anal sex, then where do lesbians stand ?” is perhaps a clue as to why this problem persists. From this perspective saying “gay people have sex therefore they can get married” is like saying “rabbits have sex therefore they can get married” (I’m not equating gay people to rabbits, just a random example to illustrate the point). If you don’t believe me ask a lawyer, they have been pointing this out for a while.

@ 19 DHT,

I think you’re wrong about Henry VIII. I think he wanted the marriage dissolved due to consanguinity, rather than annulled due to non-consummation.

I think it’s funny how so many pro-gay marriage people get prudish when the subject of sex is brought up. Anyone gonna answer the sister thing? The answer @15 fails, for the obvious reason that incest relates to sex, and the same-sex marriage definition is not going to be defined by any sexual act.

@20 I suspect the only people who could answer the sister question would be the people drafting the law, since us Internet commenters are not privy to how they’re wording it to prevent incestuous marriages.
Besides, who gives a fuck, the main purpose of incest laws was to prevent inbreeding, ain’t gonna be a problem for same sex couples, so if you really want to shag and marry your brother, you can fill yer boots far as I’m concerned.

@ 21 the main purpose of incest laws was to prevent inbreeding

Have you watched Jeremy Kyle recently?

The state should have no role in sanctioning or prohibiting voluntary social relationships(except where one of the participants lacks capacity).

19/Derek Hatton’s Tailor: Non consummation is grounds for annulment.

Of course, all the objections you raise on these grounds are also objections to straight marriage. Not all straight people have sex in exactly the same way, after all, and a wide enough variety of sexual acts have so far been invented (with more, as I understand it, being researched), that it would be entirely possible for a straight couple to have an extremely active sex life for years and then divorce on the grounds of non-consummation.

The problem with the law is that it’s extremely archaic in wording: that it has no obvious application to non-straight couples is just a consequence of that. It’s worth noting that other more modern areas of the law – the marriage laws not being the only ones needing to define “sex” – use much more general definitions under which this isn’t an issue.

@22 You can pick up the associated health care costs then.

@DHT #19:

Yes there is. Non consummation is grounds for annulment. Henry 8th used it for one of his divorces.

Richard C’s right and wrong; it’s a little more complicated than that. Henry VII, his father, didn’t want to give Katharine of Aragon’s dowry back when Arthur (VIII’s elder brother) died, so they concocted a claim that the marriage was never consummated so that VIII could get papal dispensation (necessary because of Leviticus 20:16 ) to marry his brother’s widow. When she didn’t produce a male heir, however, he argued Leviticus 20:16 to argue that the marriage was forbidden, hence that it should be annulled. Eventually Cranmer gave him his divorce on this ground.

The marriage to Anne of Cleves, however, was indeed non-consummated and was on that ground annulled.

I think people are missing the point, which is hardly surprising as the boring legal detail has been obscured by the hysteria on both sides of the debate.

Indeed…

Marriage is primarily a legal construct, not a religious one.

True, dat.

Curiously agnostics seem to find this point harder to understand than religious people.

I don’t know about agnostics (see what I did there), but we atheists have a very clear view of this point. It is the CofE’s leaders, whom I suppose one could stretch a point to call agnostics, who have missed this point completely in their claims that same-sex marriage redefines marriage, largely on the basis that marriage is a religious sacrament.

It was mainly about inheritance lines, property rights and political allegiances for centuries. The religion got bolted on at some point, but marriage existed before any current religion.

True.

No one has to go anywhere near a vicar or a church to be legally married and even if you go to a church, you aren’t married until you do the secular legal bit of signing the register.

Still true.

Gay marriage is about putting gay married couples on the same legal basis as straight ones.

You’re still on the right lines.

What I am saying is that, as the law is currently written, that is not possible, as gay sex does not have any agreed legal definition.

Oops. And you were doing so well. Why does the absence of an agreed legal definition of gay sex (if there is indeed one) prevent SSM being put on the same basis as heterosexual marriage?

Asking the question – “If you define gay sex as anal sex, then where do lesbians stand ?” is perhaps a clue as to why this problem persists. From this perspective saying “gay people have sex therefore they can get married” is like saying “rabbits have sex therefore they can get married” (I’m not equating gay people to rabbits, just a random example to illustrate the point). If you don’t believe me ask a lawyer, they have been pointing this out for a while.

No. The lawyers who know what they’re talking about haven’t. Some lawyers have come up with some poppycock about SSM not having any requirement of faithfulness (and therefore being different from heterosexual marriage) because sexual intercourse for the purpose of s1(2)(a) of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 includes only penile/vaginal intercourse. Oh dear, I see you’ve repeated this above in your post #14

As for the claim that because gay marriages cannot be consummated therefore sex is taken out of marriage – again, this is poppycock. Consummation is not required to make a heterosexual marriage legal and valid as a civil status; instead, non-consummation because of the incapacity (of either party) or wilful refusal (of the respondent) makes the marriage voidable. And no, that is not legally the same thing.

If the point of marriage is just about love and sex, then why the hell is the state involved anyway. Wouldn’t it be easier to just abolish marriage. This is the twentyfirst century – no-one needs a priest to give them permission to have sex.

Is there any good reason for the state to be involved at all? If so, what is it and then the gay marriage question will be answered very easily.

Getting IHT priviliges is not an answer. IHT privilieges are granted because the state thinks there is a benefit to society in people getting married.

By the way, in “Carry On Henry” – I’m sure there was some reference to consummation or consumption, as grounds for divorce. But I accept this was not a contemporaneious account.

I always thought Marriage was about ensuring you had a share of the in-laws wealth.

This is about the terms “consummation” and “adultery”, which are both currently legally defined in purely heterosexual terms.

But here’s the thing: most straight couples who divorce because of infidelity don’t cite the narrowly defined “adultery”. They cite unreasonable behaviour, *which can cover all forms of infidelity and will be perfectly applicable to gay marriages*. So yes, gay couples will have exactly the same divorce rights in the case of infidelity as straight couples, except the right to use the *word* “adultery”. This is pretty damn trivial.

As for consummation – well, technically this is slightly trickier. There’d be no bar to divorce, but *annulment* on the grounds of non-consummation would require a legal definition of consummation. The existing law would be easily expanded to include gay men, but in the case of gay women it’s a little trickier to define in legal terms the precise point at which sexual contact becomes intercourse.

So the danger is that lesbian annulments might be slightly harder to procure. And the solution is… not to let any same sex couples get married in the first place? How does that make any sense?

@24 – funny you should mention that:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/hay-festival/8544359/Hay-Festival-2011-Professor-risks-political-storm-over-Muslim-inbreeding.html

There’s nothing wrong with being against gay marriage.
In a multi-cultural society there will be plenty of people who have that view and plenty who take the opposite one.
Myself, I couldn’t really care less too much one way or the other, but I do tend to side with the ”traditionalists” a bit just because I think the whole thing was made into an artificial fuss.

Who cares what Nadine Dorries says or thinks?
Who cares what the Pope thinks?
So many people love getting on their high horses and sounding off about the ignorant masses (or UKIP or whatever). Just yesterday Yasmin Alibhai Brown was at it in the Independent scaring people about how dreadful racist and homophobic UKIP were. See here.
What needs to be done is that people like her’s arguments have to be taken to task, line by line.

If you want to hear a voice of reason on this isssue of gay equality and identity, you can find that here.

Nadine could make Dave’s day and defect to UKIP… but they probably wouldn’t want her.

“Incidentally why are so many right-wing MPs obsessed with what the public get up to in the bedroom? I think we should be told.” ludicrous pseudonym!

Masturbtion?

Gay marriage is about putting gay married couples on the same legal basis as straight ones. What I am saying is that, as the law is currently written, that is not possible, as gay sex does not have any agreed legal definition.

Seriously, how difficult is it to define gay sex? I’m pretty sure if someone had gay sex with you you’d know it.

@10. ludicrous pseudonym

“Oh that’s right you’re a homophobic twat. just like Dorries.”

Umm, no. No where did I say anything about my personal opinions. I just stated that any religious nutter who thinks that gays are bad is entitled to believe in such fairy in the sky nonsense. I’m an atheist. I think gays and lesbians and anyone of any gender, sexuality, culture, disability, nationality, etc should be able to have a civil marriage. That should be open to any two people with no restrictions.

I’m just saying that religious marriage should have no acknowledgement by the state. If a people have a religious marriage, then they aren’t married in the eyes of the law. They will have to have a state marriage as well. So in actual fact it is hetrosexual people who will be disadvantaged as they will have to have two weddings, religious and civil.

To put it another way, I would call for the disestablishment of the church from the state. The state should not recognise any religion or any of their weird beliefs such as not allowing gay sex or only allowing a man to divorce. It should ignore religion as anything on which to base any decision. So all religions, including that of none (atheism), are therefore equal in the eyes of the law.

I think gays and lesbians and anyone of any gender, sexuality, culture, disability, nationality, etc should be able to have a civil marriage. That should be open to any two people with no restrictions.

Disagree, I’m afraid.

If you actually analyse the very minor differences it makes whether someone is, or is not, married in the interaction of the person with the state you will realise that a state sanctioned union is entirely unnecessary.

The apparent propensity of many individuals to want to commit to each other as couples, share wealth etc can be better dealt with by a system of voluntary contracts

As I said above, the state should have no role in sanctioning or prohibiting voluntary social relationships(except where one of the participants lacks capacity).

@pagar #35:

The apparent propensity of many individuals to want to commit to each other as couples, share wealth etc can be better dealt with by a system of voluntary contracts.

Or, alternatively, since no-one wants to go through life negotiating small print, perhaps the state could provide a system of standard form contracts. They could call them laws.

@ Robin

since no-one wants to go through life negotiating small print, perhaps the state could provide a system of standard form contracts. They could call them laws.

They could call them laws, but then they would no longer be contracts voluntarily entered into, would they?

Have you ever volunteered to obey the law?

I know I haven’t.

@pagar #37:

Have you ever volunteered to obey the law?

Yes; when I accepted the laws applying to my volutary status of “married”.

@pagar, the only reason the state should get involved in the marriage business is for the tax and property laws. The state provides various tax benefits for unions. The state also has laws covering the giving and sharing of property for the purpose of tax. There is also the looking after children and who is legally entitled to do this, another state act.

People are free to ignore all the above and just have the voluntary religious, or even non-religious humanist/atheist, marriage.

@33/34

Oh ok, sorry for the abuse

However – someone correct me if I’m wrong – currently folk do have two bits of marriage to go through if they have a church/religious wedding, what with the signing of the register bit.

In Germany I understand it is far more common to have a simple registry wedding one day and a “party wedding” (for want of a better word) in the church with the white dress and so on, on another day.

Vaguely on-topic, today Dorries announced she would talk to UKIP about running on a joint ticket in 2015. Despite this being against Tory Party rules…
Having been suspended once already her time is probably up, at least as a Tory backbencher. UKIP’s first MP, maybe? Wonder how Tim W feels about that

@SBML

the only reason the state should get involved in the marriage business is for the tax and property laws. The state provides various tax benefits for unions. The state also has laws covering the giving and sharing of property for the purpose of tax. There is also the looking after children and who is legally entitled to do this, another state act.

Yes, but my point was that the state need not, and should not, be involved in any of this.

1. The state not being involved at all in marriage is not on the table. What is on the table is (A) SSM or (B) no SSM.

2. Dorries is a hypocrite and her ‘questions’ have been asked and answered a zillion times before, see Hansard.

3. Questions about consummation and faithfulness and spinster sisters are not genuine or well-meant, they are spurious questions intended to wreck the bill.

Incidentally, Labour suffered the same spurious questions and wrecking amendments when it pushed the civil partnerships bill through Parliament nine years ago.

It is difficult to find mention of spinster sisters in tax debates.

Ivan White

Excellent point Ivan – once again we find ourselves subject to the dictation of morality from the most amoral arseholes on the planet.

Clearly these people have no shame – I wouldn’t show my face on the subject of ‘marriage’ after I betrayed mine.

pagar

We are governed by CONSENT – which means all laws are voluntary.

Your lack of knowledge in this area is not uncommon – which is why the sheepeople of Britain continue to accept bullshit from the highest levels of arseholery (the Government)

@ 42 In an ideal world the state would indeed have no involvement in marriage and this whole debate would be irrelevant. Unfortunately feminists have somehow forced politicians to cling to the 1950s conception that women who decide to get divorced still need ongoing economic support from men. This claim on another’s wealth requires legal enforcement hence government involvement

I used to work in the Treasury during my degree covering areas including Inheritance Tax and writing letters to MPs/public in response to queries. It’s NOT hard to find an example of sisters wanting to have a civil partnership to avoid tax… http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/7372555.stm

I wrote to my MP recently saying that the state needn’t be involved in legitimising or regulating consenting adult relationships and we might as well scrap state marriage and civil partnerships and have a generic arrangement called a state-recognised partnership. Any consenting adults can enter into this, for any reason (sexual/relational or otherwise) with a minimum of 20 years to prevent abuse of the privileges (taxes, etc). Then churches offer a marriage which is nothing to di with the state and up to them to define, just as a heterosexual or homosexual couple who are atheists may wish to have a ceremony and refer to each other and husbands/wives/partners.

Can anyone find any reason to disagree? Why can’t this be instigated in the next couple of years and stop groups feeling persecuted/marginalised (homosexuals/Christians) being damaged, stop wasting legislative time, and withdrawing the government from another area of our lives?

Let’s take the definition of marriage out of state ownership.

@ Derek

” In an ideal world the state would indeed have no involvement in marriage and this whole debate would be irrelevant. Unfortunately feminists have somehow forced politicians to cling to the 1950s conception that women who decide to get divorced still need ongoing economic support from men. This claim on another’s wealth requires legal enforcement hence government involvement.”

Common scenario: married couple decide to have children. Woman puts career on hold to look after the children, possibly for their entire childhoods if the man earns enough. 20 years later, woman has far worse career prospects and, without a joint bank account, far less assets than her husband simply because of the part she happened to take in an arrangement they were both comfortable with.

I’m not sure why you think that this should not be recognised should the couple then divorce.

Of course, the above can and does happen vice versa. It’s just far rarer because of a) social norms, b) differences in how men and women tend to think and c) the physical realities of pregnancy and breast-feeding. But the law isn’t “men have to give their divorcees payouts”, it’s (very roughly) “the couple split their wealth between them on divorcing”. It’s not gendered. And there’ll be plenty of men who earn less than their wives and end up benefiting from that.

None of this, in any case, is the reason we haven’t gotten rid of marriage. That’s simply because there’s no appetite for doing so, and it would in any case be unpopular.

@ 12 JV

“No one has responded to one of the tweets:

“Could a sister marry a sister””

The answer is no, obviously.

Can a brother marry a sister? No? Yeah, I’m thinking that should be your first clue.