It isn’t dying, in fact it is growing (thanks to eastern european immigration).

But it is wrong!

Beatrix: “Of course, the cardinals are dead-on”

After the sexual abuse of the young by Catholic clergy on an industrial scale in so many countries, the Cardinals have no remaining credibility for any claim to moral leadership.

Very sensibly, we reject theocratic tendencies for fear of what would get foisted upon us – some want the legitimisation of polygamous marriages as practised in many other countries. It is up to Parliament to decide the legitimate scope of the marriage contract, not religious authorities. Much of what is being claimed about the fundamental social importance of marriage is factual nonsense – about half the babies being born in Britain nowadays are to unmarried couples. There is absolutely no evidence that the amount of heterosexual coupling is about to end.

Good for you and your wife, but what the hell does mean?

“gay marriage is indeed the termination of that privileged and procreative heterosexual code that has been ruining lives for 2,000 years. ”

thanks

If two people call it marrage that’s good enough for me.

The cardinals should not forget what happened in Ireland, when the church bolted sexual regression into the country’s constitution during the 1980s – only to face a terrible comeuppance. The Catholic church in Ireland and in Britain cannot reproduce itself, it is dying.

Just be be clear, this is the Catholic Church right?

Definitely not Satanists this time?

The new series of Upstairs Downstairs could do what we couldn’t quite risk, in public, slow, voluptuous, lips and eyes and joy: the kiss. While the cardinal was all roused up and raging, Alex Kingston and Emilia Fox delivered an award-winning sting of lust, curiosity, relief, a rush of love, in that kiss.

I think you might be a bit confused here. Although Upstairs Downstairs is set at a time being a lesbian was considered worse than being a Nazi, it is, in fact, made in the present, and lesbian kisses are pretty much two a penny on TV these days.

You ought to watch Spartacus: Vengeance. It treats man/woman, man/man and woman/woman sex rather more sophisicatedly than U/D. And it has a proper, socialist hero.

@Bob B, European Green Party has a few probs in that area too.

Funny Marx and Engels were massive homophobes, Jesus Christ never mentioned it. JC seemed to think storing up wealth, was not really on.

It was a revolutionary moment: millions of us watched a shard of history in which the British establishment, church and state, thought it was better to be a Nazi than a lesbian.

Am I alone in wondering whether this seems to be an odd comparison – political alignment and sexuality are not actually mutually exclusive (and there were certainly gay Nazis in the early days of the movement). In reality, at that time both Nazism and lesbianism were unacceptable, but for different reasons – and only one was ever likely to lead to arrest and internment (lesbianism never actually having been illegal).

We live in a better world, where we have beaten back the Nazis, the Leninists, the reactionaries, the service-of-the-state brigade, and we can reap the benefits. The fuss about gay marriage comes from an institution that demands its members follow its teachings – and the muted popular response to the fuss indicates the weakness of this institution.

Article 12 of the European Convention on Human Rights provides for the right to marry – but only between a man and a woman. When will this be changed?

Other than what’s in book reviews, I’ve little idea about the plot of this book: Fifty Shades of Grey, by E.L. James, a TV executive, wife and mother of two in London.

By several reports in the news, this is an erotic novel intended for women readers and it has become a hugely popular international best-seller in a short space of time.
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/03/the_new_smutty_novel_fifty_shade_of_grey_.html

This leads me to suspect that many probably nuture pleasing but unfounded illusions about the romantic qualities of heterosexual married relationships.

Lucy,

Article 12 of the European Convention on Human Rights provides for the right to marry – but only between a man and a woman. When will this be changed?

Not for a while – how many governments would support this (and how many of those would sacrifice this in favour of not allowing any other changes to the Convention?)?

I would perhaps advocate that all human rights literature should simply refer to people as humans, to avoid any of this ridiculous gender-labelling anyway – gender is complex and optional at times, so (like race) it should not be enshrined in human right – it is only those who seek to control behaviour who have anything to gain from labelling people men or women; if we are all labelled as human, then it removes a lot of basic assumptions.

@4

Definitely not Satanists this time?

Yeah, every time I see an article by Bea I think about all the lives that got destroyed by that hysteria too. It was scary how some people dived into full Matthew Hopkins mode and Marxism Today started to get all Hexenhammer.

I completely agree with same sex marriage btw. Full equality NOW!

Marriage means many very different explicit and implicit contractual relationships to different people – from extended families, to serial monogamy, to polygamy, to polyandry, to the various manifestations of wife sharing.

On moral grounds, I feel no compelling obligation to impose my preferences on others. It’s up to Parliament, not religious authorities, to decide whether the legal scope of the contractual relationship of marriage includes same-sex couples.

All the evidence suggests that children do benefit from growing up in stable families but that fact is hardly shaken by extending the civil contract of marriage to same-sex couples, if that is what they want. The dark suggestions from some that same-sex marriages will result in a near-on mass exodus from heterosexual coupling is patently absurd.

I do not think that Bea Campbell should be treated seriously,despite this obviously OK posting.

Look up Bea Campbell and satanic abuse or child abuse, look up Bea Campbell and Shieldfield.

It all makes very ugly reading, to me that puts Bea Campbell beyond consideration as a person of any worth to the left.

I can’t quite work out how it is that anyone from the Catholic church can ever ever talk down gay marriage between two loving partners wishing to make a serious commitment to each other, when a vast number of their clergy have been engaged in paedophile trysts behind confessionals or in the organ loft.

How very dare they?

Or is it that they prefer the dirty little illegal sex scene gays to the happy marriage gays?

@ Lucy – “Marx and Engels were massive homophobes”. I’d be interested to review the evidence for this. Could you direct me to your sources? Thanks.

“Funny Marx and Engels were massive homophobes”

Karl Marx and family were asylum seekers. Hounded out of mainland Europe following the revolutions of 1848, the family came and settled in London, capital city of the leading capitalist country at the time. Try this link to the Guardian on the Quo Vadis Restaurant in Dean Street, Soho, where the family lived for five years – the restraurant has one of those blue plaques commemorating the residence of its notorious tenant:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/mar/02/quo-vadis-london-w1-review

As for Engles, he ran his family’s successful textile business in Manchester.

I don’t know about their supposed homophobia but they likely followed the popular working class social values (or prejudices) of their time. Try the Wikipedia entry for: Socialism and LGBT rights.

@churm Rincewind. Letter, dated June 22, 1869, published in Marx, Karl, Engels, Friedrich: Collected Works, vols. 42, 43 (New York: International,1988).

Johann Baptist von Schweitzer: The Queer Marx Loved to Hate. In: ‘Journal of Homosexuality’ (ISSN 0091-8369) Volume: 29 Issue: 2/3, pp 69-96.

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (New York: International, 1972), pp. 61–62 -Engels condemned homosexuality describing it as “morally deteriorated”, “abominable”, “loathsome” and “degrading”.

Asked a Catholic (who supports gay marriage) about the Archbishops talking about ‘Human Rights’. She told me they were talking about a 2010 Article 12 case in the ECtHR -Schalk and Kopf v. Austria. The long and the short of it is, the judges ruled the right to marriage is only for a man and woman.

The text of Engles: The Origins of the Family, Private Property and State (1884), can be found at this link:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/

Lucy: “The long and the short of it is, the judges ruled the right to marriage is only for a man and woman.”

But did the esteemed judges of the ECtHR rule that marriage between same-sex couples was inadmissible or, by implication, only that there are no such equivalent rights for same-sex couples to marry?

Btw by what process of divination do the judges come to know about these rights?

What’s the position of the court on rights for consenting adults to engage in polygamist marriages?

Bea Campbell is not fit to be considered on the left nor of any worth , look at her history. Look up Shieldfield, just for a start. Bea Campbell has never recognised how stupidly mistaken she was, nor apologised for the serious damage she was party to.

I believe she has some kind of state given ‘honour’. Quite appropriate, I guess, since she won’t get any honour from the left that she mistakenly thinks she is a part of.

Beatrix

> Me and my lovely woman got married. Not civilly partnered. Married.

So you say you got married? OK.

> For a start, our loved ones didn’t talk – ever – about civil partnership; they talked about “doing it properly”.

So they all thought it was a civil partnership, but didn’t say so. OK

> Everybody who had anything to do with that day improvised the language …

So no one was being truthful with their language…

What does it say on the official piece of paper? That’s language that can’t be messed with.

Bea

several folk here have raised your past involvement in Satanic Ritual Abuse issues.

Are you planning to give your current view on that involvement?

Are those Satanic Abuse issues anything to do with Santorum who is running for the Republican nomination in the US Presidential elections in November?

“Satan has his sights on the United States of America!”

“Satan is attacking the great institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity, and sensuality as the root to attack all of the strong plants that has so deeply rooted in the American tradition.”

“This is a spiritual war. And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country – the United States of America. If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age? There is no one else to go after other than the United States and that has been the case now for almost 200 years, once America’s preeminence was sown by our great Founding Fathers.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/22/rick-santorum-satan-_n_1293658.html

Has Father Amorth, the Vatican’s Chief Exorcist been consulted?

Can someone please explain why the following is so wrong:

– man and women get married in a religious ceremony in a church/synagogue/mosque. This is recognised by the state as a civil partnership. The ‘religion’ calls it marriage.

– everybody else enters a civil partnership in a registry office.This applies to both any two people wishing to do so. Same rules for all.

– if a ‘religion’ wishes to marry same sex couples then that is up to them. The state recognises a civil partnership.

– if a ‘religion’ only wants to marry men & women or men and men then that is up to them.

All we need is to acknowledge civil partnerships between men and women and that’s it.

several folk here have raised your past involvement in Satanic Ritual Abuse issues.

I’ve mentioned this kind of thing several times before. If it suits the ‘left’s’ purposes they’ll give a platform to all kinds of wackjobs (Islamists, troofers, Satanic abuse theorists) when it suits their purposes, thereby giving credence to them as legitimate ‘authorities’.

Gays aren’t out to destroy the family, but those who read too much Dennis Wheatley were.

Pseudo-feminists who previously allied themselves with the Christian Far Right have no credibility whatsoever, and shame on the Greens for letting her in.

Max,

Marriage is not, despite the claims of the churches, a religious ceremony in origin – it was the last of the Christian sacraments for example (less than a thousand years old), and Islam recognises marriage outside the mosque quite happily (indeed, I am not sure that Islam regards marriage as a sacrament in the wya Christianity does). It does however have a clear popular feel and place in the imagination that ‘civil partnership’ does not.

Therefore, ceding marriage to the church (etc) alone is hardly sensible – it effectively states in the public imagination that only religion and not the state can recognise a proper union. What the government is doing is stating clearly that the state can recognise a proper union (what we call marriage) and that this is open to anyone regardless of sexuality. As the state is not into forcing religious institutions to marry anyone who demands it (put simply, most Catholic churches would not have married me, non-religious, and my wife, an Anglican, because of our religious beliefs, which is fine), there seems to be no problem with this.

The idea that marriage is primarily religious is bluntly nonsense – it is a social thing, and has always reflected society. The ancient Irish had about twelve varities of marriage for example (none involving a church) to suit the highly complex social relationships of that island. Ceding the concept of marriage to the religions is a huge victory for them, as it basically recognises them as the guardians of correct relationships. I for one would regard that as lunacy – why should old men with beards be able to tell me who I can marry?

Satanism is a rare topic to come up here, so I looked up Bea. Two comments.

1) Bloody hell!

2) HOWEVER, that doesn’t make her comments here invalid. Argumentum ad hominem.

Are those Satanic Abuse issues anything to do with Santorum who is running for the Republican nomination in the US Presidential elections in November?

No.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Irrelevant

Can anyone explain to me why Ms Campbell’s past association with Satanic abuse is relevant to this thread? As far as I am aware, marriage is open to anyone of the correct genders, however much their previous actions might displease you. The issue here seems to be about gender, not Satanism…

” the termination of that privileged and procreative heterosexual code that has been ruining lives for 2,000 years”

That’s a bit harsh. There were some happy marriages.

@Bob B #20:

But did the esteemed judges of the ECtHR rule that marriage between same-sex couples was inadmissible or, by implication, only that there are no such equivalent rights for same-sex couples to marry?

The latter; the decision was that Article 12 “Men and women of marriageable age have the right to marry and to found a family, according to the national laws governing the exercise of this right”, was intended to refer only to heterosexual marriage. Everywhere else in the convention, rights of universal application are given to “everyone” (para 55).

The decision is at:

http://www.bailii.org/eu/cases/ECHR/2010/995.html

Btw by what process of divination do the judges come to know about these rights?

I don’t understand the question; perhaps putting it in a less tendentious form would allow elucidation?

Robin,

I do wonder whether “Men and women of marriageable age have the right to marry and to found a family” has to imply that men have to marry women – this is not stated explicitly, and so long as both (or more – this clause certainly does not restrict marriage to two people) persons involved are either men or women, surely it still applies (bit of a bugger for those who wish to define themselves in other ways however…).

@ 33 Watchman

It’s not explicit, but if the rest of the document tends to say “everyone”, then it does raise the question of why they didn’t use this term, or possibly “adults”.

I suspect it was written from the presumption that men get married to women.

Chaise,

Presumption is not a good idea in law, where the wording is key, not the vague intention (believe me, you do not want to draw up a contract with good intentions and little checking of the wording – consequences could be horrible). I think we would need something more concrete than that but an actually trained legal opinion mihgt help.

A nice romantic article about how somebody has subjugated themselves to State ideology. Very touching if not entirely misplaced IMO on this site. Perhaps if all relationships were deregulated (ie no God,Beelzebub or Her Majesty’s government) ,people might just go about there own business without interference from others.

@ 35 Watchman

No disagreement here – you only have to glance at any argument about the US constitution to see the problems caused by ambiguous phrasing. I’m simply guessing what the original writers had in mind.

@Watchman #33:

I do wonder whether “Men and women of marriageable age have the right to marry and to found a family” has to imply that men have to marry women – this is not stated explicitly, and so long as both (or more – this clause certainly does not restrict marriage to two people) persons involved are either men or women, surely it still applies (bit of a bugger for those who wish to define themselves in other ways however…).

So do I; but then again, I don’t sit on the ECtHR… The fact that throughout the Convention it is only in this context is there reference made to gender does though raise the question of why?

There are two points to be made about this; firstly, the ECtHR regards the Convention as a living document. The legal arguments in favour of gay marriage as a human right before the Court will become stronger as support for gay marriage grows generally.

That is clear from the treatment of transsexuals, who are treated for the purposes of the article as belonging to their gender from time to time, not restricted to their gender assigned at birth. This is good – allows a male-female to marry (strictu sensu) a man; and bad – it means that a country can refuse to continue to recognise a marriage where one participant changes gender. I don’t think anyone’s tested the position where they both change in opposite directions at different times.

Off-topic – is “bugger” quite the right word if the persons involved define themselves as other than male or female?

If the queen wasn’t the head of the church of england and there wasn’t bishops in the lors,there would be a link between religion and state, if marrage was devoleved altgether and heterosexual civil partnerships came in, then people could get married in church and civil parternships should contnue, otehrwise we might jus say ‘ because of alleged homophobia ,we’re changing the word marraige in the dictionary as we don’t like some words meanings, these days the word facsist seems to have lost all meaning, afterall accroding to some on the left, ,a left wing person can’t be a fasicst as all leftites are democrats who dont’ use oppresion to get their veiws across,a dn everyone who ‘s concerned about sharia law , like UKIp or the EDL ,well the’yre all fascists too aren’t they.

@ 30.

Indeed the thread is about marriage – which is why I thought it pertinant to make my opinion on the subject clear in my previous comment.

This however does not change the fact that Ms Campbell’s words caused a great deal of pain and trauma to a great many people. I have a very clear memory of the events at the time – I’m sorry if this causes you or anyone else a problem, but I for one won’t forget that in a hurry, and will continue to be reminded of those shocking events whenever I see Ms Campbell expressing her views.

I was also shocked that the Green Party accepted her to stand as a GP candidate. The Green Party have always claimed to have a measured, tolerant and socially liberal outlook. I have previously voted Green, but won’t do so now.

I’ve just read all about shieldfield, I was too young to remember this originally. It’s made me so angry – I cant believe these paedos got away with it!

Seriously, I can’t stop thinking about it this complete scandal. The losers appear to be the accused, the children, the parents and the tax payer.

Once again the only winners are the newspapers.

No disagreement here – you only have to glance at any argument about the US constitution to see the problems caused by ambiguous phrasing. I’m simply guessing what the original writers had in mind.

That’s right, there are lots of arguments about things that at first glance seem perfectly simple; for example in what is perhaps the most concise ‘guarantee’ of rights on the planet, the First Amendment, what constitutes “speech” that merits constitutional protection, and when is it ok to infringe on exercise of religion even though the amendment seems pretty explicit that Congress “shall not”; even the use of a word like “person” in the Constitution has caused a stir (blacks weren’t at one point “persons” within the meaning of the Constitution). We continue today to see great arguments between originalists and non-originalists.

So what were the social mores when the Convention was drafted c1950? My guess is they didn’t think about homosexual marriage at all. The Convention doesn’t say homosexuals may not marry each other, it’s just explicit that men and women, as opposed to ‘everyone’, have a right to marry, therefore Shalk and Kopf, two men, couldn’t win their case with that particular Article of the Convention.. Important to note that the Court said the two men “raised serious issues of fact and law” – iow, there are very reasonable grounds for complaint here, and we really ought to think about it, but you just can’t rely on this particular Article as written to win such a case.

ukliberty,

Thanks for the clarification – men and women are taken as a couple, not as a generalisation then.

Robin,

Off-topic – is “bugger” quite the right word if the persons involved define themselves as other than male or female?

The hazards of casual use of language there…

Ah, sorry Watchman, I see what you mean. Yes, they are taken to be a couple but I agree about the ambiguity.

@32 Robin Levett: “I don’t understand the question; perhaps putting it in a less tendentious form would allow elucidation?”

By what process did the ECHR judges reach a conclusion that male and female couples have a right to marry whereas, by implication, same-sex couples have no such rights and there are no rights to polygamist marriages between consenting adults?

This question, about the source of supposedly inalienable rights, is of fundamental importance so I think we are entitled to press for answers on the process by which the court endorses some rights but not others. We are also entitled to answers on issues such as whether the right to freedom of worship takes precedence over national criminal laws relating to polygamy and the minimum age of consent to sexual relations?

This is not an abstract issue and seems likely to be played out in Canada over whether the polygamist community at Bountiful, British Columbia, can claim protection from the right to freedom of worship. FWIW I think that the criminal law must take precedence but we need then to recognise that the freedom to worship is not an unqualified right. For me, that is not a disturbing conclusion but then I have for long accepted the Burkean principle: Liberty too must be limited in order to be possessed.

@Bob B #45:

I see. The idea is that the law and precedent both have a role in the decision. In this instance, the fact that the wording makes a point of “man and woman” suggests in their view that both are required.

But read the judgment yourself (I gave the link above); that’s the whole point of judgments they explain the thought processes behind decision. It’s not a particularly long one.

@46 Robin Levett

If I understand the decision of the ECHR correctly, the decision of the court to confine the right to marry only to heterosexual couples turns the on the relevant national legislation – in this case, that of Austria – relating to the residence of the same-sex couple who made the appeal to the ECHR.

In other words, the court’s definitive reference is to the facts of national legislation, which avoids all the embarrassing issues that arise when there is a conflict but which does nothing to resolve the principle of whether same-sex couples are entitled to enter a marriage contract if they wish to do so for the (unexceptional) reasons presented by the appellants. What the court usefully does IMO is to discount various specious arguments often invoked to justify the restriction of the marriage contract to heterosexual couples – such as a claim that the inherent purpose of marriage is to procreate children when, as the court observed, couples may marry with the expressed prior intention of not having children.

I see no substantive reasons why national parliaments shouldn’t extend civil marriage contracts to same-sex couples. It is up to churches and faiths to decide whether religious marriages are restricted to heterosexual couples.

@10. Watchman: “I would perhaps advocate that all human rights literature should simply refer to people as humans, to avoid any of this ridiculous gender-labelling anyway – gender is complex and optional at times, so (like race) it should not be enshrined in human right – it is only those who seek to control behaviour who have anything to gain from labelling people men or women; if we are all labelled as human, then it removes a lot of basic assumptions.”

I do not agree 100% but those are good arguments.

Human rights documents should start off, in the title, about human rights. After that the subjects should be called “people” if the document has any meaning; there is a difference between abstract “human rights” and reality “people’s rights”; “people’s rights” are delivered by laws or agreements.

—
I hate the “she became an engineer” expression used to deflect accusations of sexism in a “for instance”. It is artificial and whilst “they” may not work all of the time, it is less “forced”.

“She” becomes impossible when describing the career of a male to female (or the other way) TS individual. How do rock music historians write about Wayne County & the Electric Chairs before and after Wayne became Jayne?

@Bob B #47:

I see no substantive reasons why national parliaments shouldn’t extend civil marriage contracts to same-sex couples. It is up to churches and faiths to decide whether religious marriages are restricted to heterosexual couples.

This is exactly right.

If I understand the decision of the ECHR correctly, the decision of the court to confine the right to marry only to heterosexual couples turns the on the relevant national legislation – in this case, that of Austria – relating to the residence of the same-sex couple who made the appeal to the ECHR.

In other words, the court’s definitive reference is to the facts of national legislation, which avoids all the embarrassing issues that arise when there is a conflict but which does nothing to resolve the principle of whether same-sex couples are entitled to enter a marriage contract if they wish to do so for the (unexceptional) reasons presented by the appellants.

The rights set out in the Convention are rights that the Court would expect to see protected or implemented by domestic law. Marriage is a legal relationship; the right set out in the Convention is one that has therefore to be implemented, rather than protected, by domestic law.

The starting point therefore has to be an examination of the domestic law to see what rights, properly construed in the light of the Convention, it implements; hence the discussion of whether the Austrian domestic law grants the right to same-sex couples to marry.

If Austrian domestic legislation so construed did grant the right to same-sex marriage, then there would be no need to reference the Convention more directly.

If it does not – and the decision was that it did not – then the question arises of whether the Convention required it to do so. The decision was that the Convention – at this time – does not; but that in the future it may.

pace ukliberty’s comments, the intentions of the original framers of the convention (other than as directly implemented in the wording of the Convention itself), and the social mores obtaining at the time are irrelevant. There is no conflict in ECHR law between originalists and others – it is accepted that the convention is a living document evolving with social mores. Hence the reference to “convergence of standards” in relation to transsexuals in para 59, and the acceptance that “the Court would no longer consider that the right to marry enshrined in Article 12 must in all circumstances be limited to marriage between two persons of the opposite sex” (para 61). Because, however, there has been no convergence in standards in relation to same-sex marriage, “as matters stand, the question whether or not to allow same-sex marriage is left to regulation by the national law of the Contracting State” (para 61).

2. Bob B

After the sexual abuse of the young by Catholic clergy on an industrial scale in so many countries, the Cardinals have no remaining credibility for any claim to moral leadership.

And Bob does his usual Bea impersonation. Come on Bob. We have been over this before. Sexual abuse in the Catholic Church is rare. Rarer than in secular schools. Small in number.

It is up to Parliament to decide the legitimate scope of the marriage contract, not religious authorities.

Indeed. As far as it goes. However religious people have a right to be heard in public and in Parliament. They have a right to lobby. And what is more they have a right to define marriage for themselves as they like. Without being forced into what violates their conscience.

Much of what is being claimed about the fundamental social importance of marriage is factual nonsense – about half the babies being born in Britain nowadays are to unmarried couples. There is absolutely no evidence that the amount of heterosexual coupling is about to end.

That depends on what you mean by coupling. Yes, we are in agreement – we have so debased the concept of marriage that fewer and fewer people do it these days. The results fill our prisons. This ought to be a moment to pause for some reflection and consider whether we want to continue down this path. Given that modern civilisation rests on people producing children in stable homes I would think further changes in this direction is not something we would want do do. But why don’t you continue to bully people with accusations of bigotry and just hope it all turns out well?

4. Shatterface

If two people call it marrage that’s good enough for me.

And three? And two plus their sheep?

7. Watchman

Am I alone in wondering whether this seems to be an odd comparison – political alignment and sexuality are not actually mutually exclusive (and there were certainly gay Nazis in the early days of the movement).

One of Johan Hari’s more unusual pieces was his argument that all Fascists are actually Gay movements. Which is not a paraphrase either. He did actually make that argument. Certainly in the post-War period, there does seem to be a little bit of an overlap.

We live in a better world, where we have beaten back the Nazis, the Leninists, the reactionaries, the service-of-the-state brigade, and we can reap the benefits.

Except we did not beat back the Leninists. They gave up. As we can see with Bea here. Who used to accept free holidays from the East German government on a regular basis. Not even a word of apology I know of. As for service-of-the-state? Well the less said about Satanism the better, right?

The fuss about gay marriage comes from an institution that demands its members follow its teachings – and the muted popular response to the fuss indicates the weakness of this institution.

Indeed. But that does not affect the rights and wrongs of the issue.

10. Watchman

gender is complex and optional at times, so (like race) it should not be enshrined in human right

Sorry but could you please explain to me why you think gender is optional and where and when it is so?

It is interesting that in the modern world the same people who insist that every other aspect of gender is mutable and a choice also tend to think that being Gay is enshrined in stone.

12. Bob B

Marriage means many very different explicit and implicit contractual relationships to different people – from extended families, to serial monogamy, to polygamy, to polyandry, to the various manifestations of wife sharing.

That does not mean we have to accept them or recognise them.

On moral grounds, I feel no compelling obligation to impose my preferences on others. It’s up to Parliament, not religious authorities, to decide whether the legal scope of the contractual relationship of marriage includes same-sex couples.

As a simple matter of power, you are right. The question is the same one Henry VIII put forward. Not whether the State has the power to declare on the marriage question, but whether the State has the right to compel everyone else to agree. Much blood later, I think many people might think that was a bad thing to do. We are at the edge of another attempt by the State to bend everyone else to the whims of a small minority in alliance with those in power. We shall have to see how it turns out.

All the evidence suggests that children do benefit from growing up in stable families but that fact is hardly shaken by extending the civil contract of marriage to same-sex couples, if that is what they want. The dark suggestions from some that same-sex marriages will result in a near-on mass exodus from heterosexual coupling is patently absurd.

We have already had a mass exodus from heterosexual marriage so it is hard to see how it could get any worse, and yet there are good reasons for thinking it will. You assert as fact what is actually the limit of your imagination. You may not be able to see any reason why heterosexual marriage would be any further reduced to irrelevancy, but that does not mean it won’t be. Of course any move further away from the idea that marriage is about children to marriage being about a pretty ceremony and a nice dress to please the people doing it is going to make the institution less relevant.

14. Tris

when a vast number of their clergy have been engaged in paedophile trysts behind confessionals or in the organ loft.

Vast numbers being an absurd lie. Not that different from the Satanic abuse claims themselves. Of which this is just the tail end.

16. Bob B

Karl Marx and family were asylum seekers. Hounded out of mainland Europe following the revolutions of 1848

Hounded out? You mean having tried to murder enormous numbers of Europeans, their would-be victims struck back and they fled here to demand more murders in the future? Even then asylum was probably not a good idea.