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Rod McPhee: We need to talk
The Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, may not be right in his opposition to gay marriage – but he may have a point.
The protesters who gathered yesterday are entitled to object to his argument, of course, but we’d all do well not to reject it out of hand.
Without listening to everyone’s views, we’ll roadblock a genuine debate on the issue of gay marriage. Because it is an issue, and we should have a debate. The gay community would, surely, be open to this.
I’m not convinced that all gay people would necessarily want to adopt the principle of traditional marriage either. After all, for years, the battle has centred on equality, not assimilation.
A few years ago two male acquaintances of mine tied the knot after spending most of their lives as a couple. It made me wonder why, after decades together, they were in such a rush to get a civil partnership. What would really change?
After voicing this to a mutual friend, he explained that, if one of them was on his death bed, the other partner’s biological family could effectively freeze him out, ask him to leave. In other words, before civil partnerships, he couldn’t be his next of kin. And it was this overwhelming idea which fuelled civil partnerships – the notion of gay people being able to select their nearest and dearest on the basis of love, in the same way that heterosexual people do.
So what’s the problem with going the whole hog with gay marriage? It’s about more than semantics, it’s about something upon which Sentamu and certain sections of the gay community might well agree – the idea that marriage as an exclusive union between men and women. In the 21st Century even straight men and women are increasingly inclined to view it as an outdated concept, might gay people also view it as second hand?
Of course, doubters may well point out that a man of the cloth would oppose any furtherance of gay people on the basis of his religious beliefs. At the same time Sentamu argues that he doesn’t oppose civil partnerships, nor did bishops when legislation came to the House of Lords.
Who do you believe? I’m certainly not inclined to believe that David Cameron, who has a patchy record on supporting gay rights in the Commons, should be taken on face value. You can’t help but suspect his move to introduce gay marriage is a cynical one, born out of opportunism, not heartfelt principle.
We could easily get very adversarial about the whole thing, paint a warped picture of the archbishop as a bigot, and a Tory prime minister, bizarrely, as some sort of liberal torchbearer.
Unless we allow the full spectrum of discussion to take place we could end up with a scenario whereby a Conservative drives through legislation to win votes, while the legitimate concerns of the church and less vocal members of the gay community are dismissed.
By all means let the protesters voice their concern, but we should ensure it doesn’t drown out voices from across the political matrix who don’t agree with their world view.
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Print this page- Politics: Mark Hookham's Westminster blog - 5.33pm
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