OpinionEqual marriage This article is more than 11 years oldGay marriage: beyond argument
This article is more than 11 years oldEditorialThe principal task for public policy is to tidy up advances already made, by extending the ordinary language of love to minoritiesOver the course of a 40-year struggle for homosexual equality, activists have found themselves ranged against a whole run of disingenuous arguments. There have been claimed fears about blackmail, about young people and about supposed state "promotion" of gay sex. Concerns, in fact, about just about anything apart from same-sex love itself, the obvious root of all the other anxieties.
Fortunately, we are now at a point where homosexuals do – for virtually all practical purposes – enjoy equal treatment under the law. There are still cultural battles to fight, but the principal task for public policy is to tidy up advances already made, by extending the ordinary language of love to minorities. With the same financial, medical and adoption rights as married couples, civil partners have begun talking about their "husbands" or "wives" in private. Gay marriage will allow the public realm to catch up. Because this final step is essentially symbolic, the traditional reactionary tack of nit-picking over practicalities is getting tricky. Protests against rewriting traditional law on the role of the "emission of seed" in consummation, for instance, illuminate nothing but the prurience of the protester.
As the response to the consultation on equal marriage is published, there are two twists on the old tale of principled reform meeting pretend practical objections. The first is that desperate defences of the status quo are starting to self-defeat. It was in an effort to address the one reasonable religious demand, that no priest should be required to bless a union they believe to be wrong, that Whitehall proposed restricting reform to civil marriage, and keeping gay weddings to hotels and civic halls, well away from hallowed ground. The distinction was always clunky, particularly because reformist chapels and synagogues have now been free to stage civil partnerships for a year. Had the law gone through in this form, religious gay couples would have had to shun marriage in favour of a civil partnership to receive a religious service. That is plainly absurd, but this was not the basis on which the Church of England attacked the civil/religious marriage distinction. Rather, it suggested that dividing marriages into different classes would somehow fracture a foundation stone of a Christian society. This sophistry appears to have tested the patience of the Christian culture secretary, Maria Miller. Appearing in the house on Monday, she appeared ready to call the church's bluff, by conceding that the civil/religious wedding distinction has indeed proved problematic – and then blurring it. She looks set to allow any church that wishes it to stage a gay wedding.
The second big twist, compared with past episodes in the gay rights story, is the stance of the Tory high command. John Major once voted against an equal age of consent, David Cameron once resisted the wholesale removal of section 28 and Boris Johnson once made an ill-advised "joke" likening the prospect of gay marriages to unions between three men and a dog. All three, however, are now lining up behind gay marriage. This evolution appears sincere and is to be wholeheartedly welcomed. Mr Cameron deserves credit for picking a fight with the 50-100 MPs on his side who refuse to move on. Greenery and concern for the poor have drained away from his modernising Conservatism, but – along with a brave commitment on international aid – here is a reminder that this creed is not quite dead.
What is dead is any serious attempt at a countervailing argument from the other side. Tory rightwingers ham up supposed threats to freedom of conscience, discovering uncharacteristic enthusiasm for a Human Rights Act they otherwise deride. The Daily Mail opines that the country is simply too busy to bother with equality, while anti-reformers look to the unelected Lords to express the imagined will of the people. But they should not assume that the peers will rally to their side. For the one thing that the upper house responds to well is the power of argument, and no real argument is being made.
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