Dear Prime Minister - again: a reply to a response

Dear Prime Minister,

RE Same-sex marriage

Thank you for the response of 19th April to my letter of 23rd March, written on your behalf by a correspondence officer.

It is sadly apparent that writing to MPs, to the government, or its officers quickly becomes an exercise in talking past each other.

I would like to make the following points in response to your letter.

1. Nowhere do you attempt to deal with the points I made about the inconsistent nature of your case based on equality. You are not treating people equally if you draw moral boundaries eg in relation to polygamy or paedophilia. I have yet to see or hear from the government or its supporters a justification for taking a moral stance on these areas, while trampling over the centuries old moral stance that marriage is to be only between a man and a woman. I would not want to see ‘marriage’ in these cases of course; but I can’t see why the government feels able to claim it is for ‘equality’ if it makes these distinctions. Does the government deal in principles at all? Or are you purely guided by pragmatism and expediency?

2. You repeat the mantra that you are not changing anything to do with what you call ‘religious marriage’. But where does ‘religious’ marriage come from? Marriage, as I said in my letter, is marriage. Christians and others who oppose the current changes are not doing so we because we are protecting our little ‘patch’ of religious rites and rituals. We are campaigning because marriage between a man and a woman is a bedrock of society, not just for those who are religiously inclined. Your rather patronising utterances about the ‘vital role’ religious organisations play in society is beside the point. Society cannot afford to be schizophrenic on such a vital issue, distinguishing between ‘civil’ and ‘religious’ (or ‘gay’ and ‘straight’) marriage in this fashion. Moreover, in view of the haste and the determination with which the present change is being introduced, your assurances of no further changes that will affect churches are not comforting.

3. You say that you want to encourage commitment. Why, though, is marriage for gay people necessary for this end? In your letter you state specifically that ‘the commitment made by same-sex couples in a civil partnership is the same as the commitment by opposite-sex couples in a civil marriage’. If the commitment is the same, why do gay couples need marriage? Why is civil partnership not enough? Why, for the sake of a small minority, change an institution which has been honoured throughout the centuries and throughout the world?

4. Nowhere do you even try to square this present policy with your views on the importance of the Bible, expressed in December. But perhaps I am hoping for too much.

Your argument is riddled with inconsistencies, one fears, because basically the change is driven not by principle but by politics. As I said in my first letter: the government (despite the sop of a ‘consultation’ which is really an opportunity for us merely to express our opinions – more a public counselling service than a true consultation) is not engaging with valid arguments and gives every appearance of being in the clutches of a disproportionately powerful group of fashionable opinion-formers. I doubt very much if the public would be clamouring for this change if the government had not introduced it.


Yours sincerely,