Legal challenge to gay marriage ban in churches

Back in May I wrote about gay marriage and warned that the EU Court of Human Rights would rule that churches refusing to conduct gay marriages is a breach of human rights.

The matter hasn't made it to the EU Court of Human Rights yet but a gay couple have just announced their intention to take the Church of England to court for the right to get married in church.  Their argument is that their choice of venue for their wedding is more important than the religious beliefs of a few million Christians and that the law should be changed.

It upsets me because I want it so much – a big lavish ceremony, the whole works, I just don’t think it is going to happen straight away.

As much as people are saying this is a good thing I am still not getting what I want.

As I said back in May, I'm neither gay nor religious so I really don't have a vested interest either way but I do think it's wrong to force churches to conduct same sex marriages if it's against their religious beliefs.  This legal challenge will almost certainly fail because the Church of England isn't refusing to conduct a gay marriage of its own volition but because the law bans them from doing so but it will undoubtedly be used to request a judicial review of the law banning gay marriages in church and that will eventually end up in the EU Court of Human Rights.

As a party, UKIP warned that this would happen and lawyers and even MPs warned that it would happen too.  Cameron knew what the consequences were but continued down this divisive and dangerous route where a foreign court will decide whether the right of a gay couple to get married in church is more important than the rights of members of the church who believe it is a sin.  Either way, one group of people is going to be denied their "rights" as defined in the EU Convention on Human Rights and a lot of lawyers will get very rich bringing legal cases on this for decades to come.

Gay marriage bill is divisive and unnecessary

The British government has voted to legalise gay marriage in England and Wales but David Cameron has suffered yet another embarrassing rebellion with 133 Tory MPs voting against the party.

I personally couldn't care less whether gay people want to get married and I don't have a problem with gay marriage being legalised.  What I do have a problem with - and this is where UKIP's opposition to the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill stems from - is with religious organisations being forced to conduct them against their if it's against their beliefs.

I listened to some of the debate yesterday and I can't decide whether the MPs talking about the protections for religious organisations in the bill were deceitful or just ignorant.  The protections were described as a "triple lock" and later a "quadruple lock" but really any protections are useless when the EU Court of Human Rights can (and will) rule it a breach of human rights.

The British government has started on a dangerous path with this legislation that will see the rights of religious people not to have to take part in something that is against their beliefs pitted against the rights of gay people to get married.  I'm neither religious nor homosexual so don't have a vested interest in either side and I don't think the rights of either side are more important than the other.  But the EU Court of Human Rights will rule in favour of gay marriage because it always rules against Christians trying to protect their religious rights so one group of people will lose their rights so that another group of people can call their marriage a marriage rather than a civil partnership.

Yesterday's vote wasn't a victory for gay rights or "equal marriage" (although it was good to hear an MP call for civil partnerships to be extended to straight couples in the name of equality) - it was a victory for a relatively small group of militant gay rights activists fronted by Pink News who have created the illusion of demands for the right to call their civil partnership a marriage.  I don't profess to be an expert on the gay community but I do have a few gay friends and the ones I've spoken to about gay marriage really don't care.

There is no difference in the legal rights of a gay couple in a civil partnership or a straight couple in a marriage, this law will change nothing other than the name of a civil partnership.  It is divisive and unnecessary and has wasted huge amounts of taxpayers' money for what?  A friend of mine is in a civil partnership, he calls his partner his husband and says they are married.  So what if the law says that it can't be called a marriage on a legal document because they're gay?  It doesn't change what it is and what it is is a marriage in all but name.

Cameron calls eurosceptics "swivel eyed loons"

The Daily Mail is reporting that David Cameron has referred to Conservative Party activists pressuring him into honouring his promises for an EU referendum as "swivel eyed loons".

Since news of the Cameron using the kind of insult he usually reserves for UKIP to describe his own people, visits to the UKIP website have reportedly increased by 300%.  It also coincides with 36 Tory constituency associations writing to Cameron telling him to ditch his support for gay marriage or resign.

Agent Cameron Strikes Again

Why does he do it?

The consensus was that after his crafted and long-awaited speech on Europe, David Cameron had "done enough", to quote Nigel Farage, to stop Tory defections to UKIP.

Now, having seriously split his party asunder by championing the idea of same-sex marriage, the Prime Minister rubs salt into the wounds of social traditionalists by refusing to countenance introducing marriage tax breaks in the next budget.

The reason, apparently, is that he did not want to be seen to kowtow to those likely to rebel on the same-sex marriage bill being voted on in the Commons this week. However, such an explanation really does not wash when you consider that Cameron, for all his myriad faults, has always championed the need for marriage tax breaks. There was therefore no need for him to worry about appearing weak on an issue with which he is supposedly in agreement with the bulk of his party.

There are only two possible explanations for his behaviour. Firstly, that he is in essence a very weak and impressionable man, easily talked out of positions by his fashionable Metropolitan friends such as Osbourne and Clegg whose approval he desperately craves. No more in reality than a posh version of John Major, his essential vapidity is hidden by his Eton polish and arrogance.

The second is that his social snobbery is so pathological that it actually cripples his ability to govern effectively: he simply can not bear to be associated with any issue that animates those he considers his social inferiors, and instead emphasises his aloofness by humiliating his party at every opportunity.

These explanations, are, of course, mutually reinforcing rather than mutually contradictory.

The third explanation is that Cameron really is a sleeper placed in the Conservative party by others wanting it's destruction - "Agent Cameron",  as the journalist Patrick O'Flynn sarcastically dubbed him.

Whatever the reason, by telegraphing that he much prefers the approval of the likes of Nick Clegg to respecting Conservative sensitivities, Cameron has once again managed to completely unnecessarily enrage and alienate his own party activists and MP's.  As a consequence, a further dwindling of the Tory activist base is probably now inevitable. Moreover, many Conservative MP's, who will have noticed nervously from the opinion polls that the UKIP fox remains stubbornly unshot, will once again be considering the merits of outright revolt or even defection.

For us 'Kippers, Agent Cameron is the gift that keeps on giving.

Statement on gay marriage

Following recent events where UKIP's stand on gay marriage has been misrepresented in the press and on social media, the party has clarified its position once again:

Nothing about this Bill has alleviated our concerns over whether individuals or religious institutions will be adequately protected from legal contests against their stance on same sex marriage.

Such legal contests could end up in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. With only one example of case history directly relating to same sex marriage, it is impossible to predict how future judgments would go.

The real issue here is that final judgements would be made by judges in Strasbourg and could not be overturned by the UK. The matter would be entirely out of British hands.

A lot of the debate on same sex marriage actually centres on the definition and propriety of the term “marriage” and how various individuals and institutions take ownership of and interpret that term. For the Church of England the word defines a contract between a man and woman. For many in society and across the world, the application is far broader. As a party we are not in any way opposed to civil partnerships. Indeed we are the only party to believe that transferable married tax allowance should be made available to couples in civil partnerships and that they should be on an equal footing with traditional marriages.

We are more than happy for people who wish to define themselves within society as “married” to do so, however we wholly disagree with the intrusion of the Government on a religious institution’s definition of the term marriage, whatever that religion may be.

Where the Bill purports to protect the individuals and religious institutions, it is our fear that via legal interference, quite the reverse is true.

The issue is not the clean-cut black and white debate that is being portrayed in the media. It raises a variety of challenging questions ranging from the definitions of consummation of marriage to adultery, which will lead to a Gordian knot of legal implications and difficulties likely to wind up in a court in Strasbourg to which British law is fully subservient and over which Britain bears no control.

It is expressly for these reasons that we believe the Bill is rather cynically being used as a popularity boost and a distraction from other issues, when in fact there is far more at stake than meets the eye.

UKIP's opposition to the British government's proposed new law on gay marriage isn't because the party is opposed to gay marriage, it is because the party wants to protect religious freedoms and not just for Christians but for all religions.

The truly pathetic Nick Clegg

Just when you thought the esteem in which he is held couldn't sink any lower, Nick Clegg has surpassed himself.

"Gay Marriage is inevitable" he declared today, adding for good measure that it "must happen now" and that "opponents would not stop the change".

Now, you may think that gay marriage should be brought in now, but to state it must be suggests some form of time dependency that flies completely in the face of its supposed "inevitability". (Incidentally a very  weak intellectual argument in itself - 'inevitable' in the same way that Britain joining the Euro was 'inevitable', eh, Nick? But I digress.)

But the reason one suspects that gay marriage must be brought in now has more to do with the fact that Clegg is deeply concerned about his own political legacy than about gay people who want to get spliced. Acutely aware that he has precious little to show for his time in the British political sun, which is perhaps already past it's meridian, and maybe fearing that Britain's exclusion from the coming FiskalUnion will consign him to second-rank status upon his return to Brussels, Clegg perhaps senses that his career will be judged a failure and is thus desperate to get gay marriage and Lord's reform through Parliament.

But the true arrogance of the man was revealed in his remark that  "opponents would not stop the change". Really? So it's already decided? So the will of Parliament and democracy counts for nothing? With break-taking hypocrisy, later in the day he attacked the undemocratic nature of the House of Lords. A perfectly valid point in itself, but rather rich from a man who had, notoriously, been all in favour of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and when the rubber hit the road told his troops to abstain.

Clegg is the poster child for the over-privileged Metropolitan Liberal Classes. The living embodiment of the fact that high intelligence and wisdom are very often negatively correlated. He clearly lacks all self-awareness and cannot see the discrepancy in attacking the internships he directly benefited from when  a young man, or promoting gay marriage at the same time as sending his children to Roman Catholic schools, or denouncing the Lords as undemocratic while worshipping at the altar of the European Union.

The man is simply wretched. Let us hope at the next election we will finally see the back of him.

UKIP's position on gay marriage

UKIP's NEC has announced the party's position on same-sex marriage.

This is, of course, an emotive subject and the position won't please everyone but the reasoning behind it is logical and consistent which is the most anyone could expect in the circumstances.

UKIP London chairman, David Coburn, says that UKIP supports same-sex civil partnerships but doesn't support same-sex marriage.  The party's position is that civil partnerships are a legal matter and marriage is a religious matter and that government has no business telling the church what does and doesn't constitute marriage.

I agree to a certain extent - it certainly isn't the business of the state to interfere in religious matters and if same-sex relationships are a sin for a particular religion then they shouldn't be forced to conduct same-sex marriages.  However, marriage isn't solely a religious matter - I didn't get married in a church because we're not religious in the slightest but it's still a marriage.

There's no reason why same-sex couples shouldn't have civil marriages if they want to go further than a civil partnership and conversely, no reason why heterosexual couples shouldn't be allowed to have civil partnerships if they don't want to go as far as marriage (something that heterosexual couples aren't allowed to do).

I don't agree that the church (any church) should be forced to marry a same-sex couple if it is against their religion - a vicar can refuse to marry a heterosexual couple if they're the "wrong" denomination, if they aren't from the parish, if they're not religious enough or if they just don't want to so why shouldn't they have the right to refuse to marry same-sex couples because they consider it a sin?

This really is a matter of conscience and not something for politicians to decide.  We can't force a muslim woman to remove her face covering even though it's not a religious requirement because it's a breach of her rights but we can force a vicar to marry a same-sex couple even though he or she thinks it's a sin?  I'm sorry but that's just not right.  Let vicars and other religious leaders decide if they want to condone and preside over same-sex marriages as a matter of conscience, not be forced to do so under threat of prosecution.

No doubt UKIP's announcement will be seized upon by the holier than thou, PC brigade and misrepresented as homophobia but that's the price you pay for taking a principled stand.