I wasn’t planning on any Christmas blogging. There are better things to do, like drink sloe gin, eat vast amounts of all sorts of things, and play with the childrens’ new toys. But then my Xmas was intruded upon when a family law related “news” item wafted into my dreams when the radio alarm went off at 6. I pretended I hadn’t heard it and went to make a turkey curry, but the one time I go to check my phone I see Adam Wagner has flagged it for me via twitter (damn you Adam ;-)).
So darn you Coleridge J with your festive gay marriage bah humbugs. It’s because of you I’m christmas blogging. Thankfully my children have lapsed into an early sugar induced coma so I have not had to cut short my playtime, but I have been ignoring my spouse in preference for my laptop screen just like an ordinary night, when really I should be cajoling him into playing monopoly or scrabble against his will (he escaped from the post it note game this afternoon by volunteering to wash up).
I’ll keep it short, Johnny Depp is on the telly. To summarise, what Coleridge said I’ll quote from the BBC report:
Sir Paul told the Times newspaper: “So much energy and time has been put into this debate for 0.1% of the population, when we have a crisis of family breakdown.
“While it is gratifying that marriage in any context is centre stage… but it [gay marriage] is a minority issue.
“We need… a more focused position by the government on the importance of marriage.”
If you’re running an argument that family and wider society is breaking down because people don’t know how to make long term commitments to one another any more, and if you think that the celebration and encouragement of an institution that allows couples to make a public, legally binding and lifelong commitment to one another is a good thing, it doesn’t make any sense to limit your efforts to promote membership of that institution to certain parts of society only.
And if your view is really that equal marriage is a minority sideshow that doesn’t matter why engineer a situation where it becomes front page news on Boxing Day again? When I first heard Coleridge speak about the Marriage Foundation the message on gay marriage was “we’re not going there” (see here where the FAQ still says “We have nothing we want to say in the current debate”). Now the plan seems to be to slipstream on the gay marriage press coverage whilst still not coming out with a position on it. Or perhaps alternatively its less of a plan and more a case of one too many sloe gins before bumping into a journalist on the tube. Who knows. The result is much the same. Continue Reading…