Petition defending traditional marriage reaches 400,000 signatures; The Government should ditch its plans to redefine marriage; Gay MP attacks Government plans to allow same-sex couples to marry; Why liberals and progressives should refuse to get on the gay-marriage bandwagon; Church Services after a Civil Partnership Registration: What is and is not permitted?; Tory MEP warns Cameron over ‘militant gay agenda’; We’re being bullied by a privileged elite – Anne Widdicombe; The Government’s consultation on gay marriage is riddled with Queer Theory gibberish
Petition defending traditional marriage reaches 400,000 signatures
Christian Today – A petition in defence of traditional marriage has been signed by more than 400,000 people. The petition was launched by the Coalition for Marriage (C4M) in opposition to the Government’s plans to widen the definition of marriage to gay couples. Since going live in February, the petition has gone on to become the largest campaign against a government policy in this Parliament. The Government launched a consultation last month but stated that its aim was not to determine if the law on marriage should be changed, but to ascertain how to introduce the reform. The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, and the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, Archbishop Vincent Nichols, are among the Church leaders to oppose the plan.In an interview with the Washington Post this week, the openly gay Labour MP Ben Bradshaw said that the gay community “never needed the word marriage”.“This isn’t a priority for the gay community, which already won equal rights with civil partnerships,” he said.
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/petition.defending.traditional.marriage.reaches.400000.signatures/29618.htm
The Government should ditch its plans to redefine marriage
Christian Today – The Government seems hell bent on changing the definition of marriage in spite of questionable support even within the gay community
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/the.government.should.ditch.its.plans.to.redefine.marriage/29665.htm
Gay MP attacks Government plans to allow same-sex couples to marry
Mailonline – One of Britain’s first openly gay MPs has criticised Government plans to allow same-sex couples to get married as a petition opposing the move has attracted more than 400,000 signatures.
Former Labour minister Ben Bradshaw said the controversial move was ‘pure politics’ and insisted that Britain’s gay community did not need the word ‘marriage’.
His comments came as the petition on the No 10 website which supports keeping the institution of marriage between husbands and wives went over the 400,000 mark.
The petition, launched by the Coalition for Marriage (C4M), has now been signed by more people than voted in last year’s local elections in either Birmingham or Manchester.
[…] Colin Hart, C4M’s campaign director, said: ‘The campaign is going from strength to strength and there is no sign of a slowdown in the number people adding their names to the petition.
‘I welcome the comments by Mr Bradshaw, who has hit the nail on the head when he said that the Government is playing “pure politics” with this issue.
‘Civil Partnerships already give the same legal rights to same sex couples that marriage gives to heterosexual couples. This squashes the Government’s major argument for forcing through this change.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2125937/Ben-Bradshaw-attacks-Government-plans-allow-sex-couples-marry-despite-gay.html
Why liberals and progressives should refuse to get on the gay-marriage bandwagon
The Australian – Who could possibly oppose gay marriage?
These days only cranky men of the cloth come out in hives at the mention of it. Everyone else, liberal to conservative, thinks it is a fabulous idea.
In Britain, Tory prime minister David Cameron has become an active agitator for gay marriage. In Australia, despite Julia Gillard’s opposition to it, the Labor Party embraced gay marriage in a “conscience vote”.
Across the Western world, backing gay marriage has become a way of advertising your moral decency and modernness. As one British columnist put it, only those in the grip of the “sickening plague of bigotry” could oppose it.
Well, at the risk of putting myself on the side of evil in this culture war, I must say I’m concerned about the drive for gay marriage.
Not for religious reasons (I’m an atheist) and certainly not from an anti-gay standpoint, but for classically liberal reasons – because I think the gay-marriage bandwagon is bad for heterosexual married couples, and for homosexual couples too.
http://brendanoneill.co.uk/post/20590301764/why-liberals-and-progressives-should-refuse-to-get-on
Church Services after a Civil Partnership Registration: What is and is not permitted?
Fulcrum – What is a member of the (C of E) clergy permitted to do when asked by a same-sex couple to provide a church service in recognition of their Civil Partnership? On the face of it the answer would seem to be clear. In 2005 The House of Bishops issued a “Pastoral Statement on Civil Partnerships;” a House of Bishops statement is not, directly at least, Canon law, but it is a document of high authority, indicative of the doctrine of the church, and not to be readily dismissed. It stated:
the House of Bishops affirms that clergy of the Church of England should not provide services of blessing for those who register a civil partnership. (para.17)
Yet for some time now there have been those who have argued that this statement is not as clear as it first appears. They have encouraged clergy to respond pastorally to same-sex couples by providing church services which, they claim, do not contravene the Bishops’ guidance. Inclusive Church has even published a sample order of service for just such occasions.
http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/page.cfm?ID=706
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Tory MEP warns Cameron over ‘militant gay agenda’
This is Devon – A Conservative MEP for the South West has warned David Cameron that legalising same-sex marriage will prompt a grassroots party revolt.
Giles Chichester, who represents the Tory Party in Brussels, has written to the Prime Minister urging him to reconsider the “bizarre” move.
Mr Chichester, the party’s energy spokesman in the European Parliament, believes it is a “mystery” why Mr Cameron is pushing the “militant gay agenda” championed by pressure groups.
While supportive of same-sex civil partnerships, he warns the proposals, launched this month, are among a series of policies working to “undermine the traditional family”.
He writes: “Should this measure go through, it will cause many Conservatives to question their loyalty to a party which is no longer supporting values inherent to the party.”
http://www.thisisdevon.co.uk/Tory-MEP-warns-Cameron-militant-gay-agenda/story-15656800-detail/story.html
We’re being bullied by a privileged elite
Daily Express – Ann Widdecombe, – I did not campaign for David Cameron all day, every day in the last general election in the expectation that my reward would be a massive increase in state intrusion and the destruction of traditional marriage.
It is true that the rotten proposal to penalise through the child benefit system those families where mum brings up the kids full time has been amended but it needed an outcry which should not have been necessary in the first place.
No matter how great the outcry, however, we now have a Government determined to press ahead with the removal of the terms “husband” and “wife” in its wholly superfluous introduction of gay marriage.
There are more than 400,000 signatures on the Downing Street website against the proposal but the Government shrugs. It will listen only when it approves of the response and if it doesn’t then its citizens can shut up and stop pestering. Well don’t shut up, go to c4m.org.uk and sign up.
As Ben Bradshaw, the gay MP, has said, the move will not add any rights that homosexuals do not already have
http://www.express.co.uk/ourcomments/view/313814/Ann-Widdecombe
The Government’s consultation on gay marriage is riddled with Queer Theory gibberish
Telegraph – When Francis Maude used the phrase “kitchen supper”, the commentariat had a field day, branding such lingo “alien to a large proportion of the population”. Why hasn’t there been a similar reaction to Maude’s government’s consultation on same-sex marriage? That document also uses language that is “alien to a large proportion of the population”. In fact, some of it is pure gibberish, made up of the kind of words and phrases you don’t normally hear outside of Queer Studies departments at those former polytechnics that now masquerade as universities.
Consider question No 3. Any member of the public who decides to give the government his or her views on same-sex marriage is firstly asked “What is your sexual orientation?”, is secondly asked “What is your gender?”, and is then asked the following: “Is your gender identity the same as the gender you were assigned at birth?”
You what? There are so many weird things in that sentence it is hard to know where to start. It seems pretty clear that what is really being asked is this: “Have you ever had a sex change?” But in an effort to appease the social constructionist feminist lobby (which prefers the term “gender” to “sex”) and to avoid offending the transgender community (which has gone off the phrase “sex change” in recent years), the government couldn’t possibly pose the question in such stark, easily understandable terms. So instead it gets all verbose and tongue-tied by enquiring after our “gender” and “identity” and the question of when and by whom those things were “assigned” to us.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/brendanoneill2/100150115/the-governments-consultation-on-gay-marriage-is-riddled-with-queer-theory-gibberish/