Gay marriage politically, rather than ethically motivated

In an article written for The Telegraph, journalist Christopher Booker has commented that David Cameron’s ‘desperation’ to get the gay marriage bill, ‘which wasn’t included in his 2010 manifesto’, signed into law is part of a europe-wide ‘coup’ which is designed to force an amendment to the European human rights law.

In the article, he also discusses the plan to allow heterosexual couples the right to a civil partnership, but this plan was subject to a strict U-turn when it was discovered that the ‘resulting tax privileges’ from this amendment would cost the Treasury ‘up to £4 billion a year.’ This goes someway towards excplaining the House of Lords recent decision to overturn the ‘wrecking amendment’ and pass the bill as it was written earlier this week.

The politics behind the decision seems complicated and its motives remain unclear. Booker goes on to say that the cataylst for allowing same sex marrige was an ‘alliance between Theresa May, the Conservative Home Secretary, Lynne Featherstone, the Lib Dem equalities minister, and gay pressure groups, led by one called Equal Love.’

‘They pushed the issue forward, not in Westminster, but through the Council of Europe, culminating in March last year with a day-long ‘secret conference’ chaired by Miss Featherstone in Strasbourg.’

‘With the public excluded for the first time in the Council’s history, it was here that – with the active support of Sir Nicolas Bratza, the British president of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) – a deadline was set for their planned coup of June 2013.’

‘If, by this date, ‘several countries’ had managed to put gay marriage into law, Sir Nicolas pledged that his court would then declare same-sex marriage to be a Europe-wide human right. Hence the recent rush for several countries to oblige.’

This might go some way to explain the momentum that seems to have built up around the issue over the past 6 months, with the deadline fast approaching countries’ governments seem to be forcing Europe to act on the issue of equality.

The first gay wedding took place in France last week, following the bill being signed into law only days earlier.

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