Robert Hampton

50 years ago, homosexuality was illegal. In an amazing turnaround, by the middle of next year, gay relationships will be on an (almost) equal footing to heterosexual ones, as the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill 2013 is now the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013, after Royal Assent was received on Wednesday afternoon.

I’ll be honest – there were times when I didn’t think it would happen. From the minute the plans were announced back in 2011, a formidable campaign against same-sex marriage was launched, unleashing old-school attitudes and opinions that I naively thought had disappeared from public discourse. Certain sections of society are not nearly as tolerant and accepting as we thought they were.

The leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland (or, as he is now known, the disgraced former leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland), Cardinal Keith O’Brien, launched an astonishing diatribe, describing same-sex marriage as a “grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right”. The Telegraph and the Daily Mail were vociferous in their opposition.

The Coalition for Marriage – which described itself as a “grass roots” campaign despite being launched by luminaries such as the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, and reality TV star Anne Widdecombe – set up a petition which, at the time of writing, has a rather pleasing 666,493 signatures. The Government’s own consultation ignored the organised petitions and form letter campaigns, but still revealed widespread opposition.

The cynical view was that this bill was David Cameron’s attempt to “modernise” the Tory party image. If that was his goal, it failed – more Conservative MPs voted against the bill than for it, and Tory MPs have been the most vociferous in their criticism of the bill. Political commentators talked of divisions in the Tory party and rumours swirled of leadership challenges to the Prime Minister. The very real lives and loves of LGBT people were rather lost amongst all the punditry.

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Amazing scenes in America recently, as the Supreme Court handed down two great pro-gay rulings. Not only did it strike down the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibited legally married gay couples from accessing federal marriage benefits, it also overturned Proposition 8, a nasty piece of legislation which banned same-sex marriage in California.

There has been lots of debate about the merits of the decisions, but ultimately this is about simple human rights. Same-sex relationships are just as valid – just as loving and tender and imperfect and tumultuous – as heterosexual ones, and should be recognised as such.

It’s about people’s happiness, and so I think the video below says it all perfectly.

This is far from the end of the road for marriage equality in the US. Same-sex marriage is only legal in 13 states, while many more have placed laws on the statute books explicity banning it. However, the momentum is now definitely with the pro-gay side, with a majority of people now in favour.

Meanwhile, on this side of the pond, legislation to enact same-sex marriages across England and Wales is tantalisingly close to becoming reality. Despite the best attempts of opponents to derail it, the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill will reach its third and final reading in the House of Lords on Monday, the penultimate stage on the long road to Royal Assent.

Similar legislation is about to be introduced in Scotland. This beautiful video from Scotland’s Equality Network shows that It’s Time:

Amazing scenes in New Zealand’s Parliament, which voted to legalise same-sex marriage today, with marriages becoming legal within the next four months. New Zealand is the 13th country to legalise same-sex marriage.

Maurice Williamson, an MP for the centre-right National Party, gave a brilliant, humorous speech in support of marriage equality:

The truly amazing scene though, came after the result of the vote was announced:

They started SINGING.

One of the few enjoyable moments at my alma mater was the Religious Studies lessons taught by John Pugh. What could have been a dull topic (especially to a young proto-gay leaning towards atheism) was livened up no end by his sense of humour which permeated every lesson. He once set an end-of-year exam consisting of multiple-choice questions, every one of which had a “gag” answer alongside three more serious possibilities (I can’t remember the question, but one of the answers was “Unshaven villains are impersonating priests!”). It’s the only time I’ve ever chuckled during an exam.

Since then, he’s left the world of teaching behind and is now the Liberal Democrat MP for Southport. By all accounts he’s done a decent job (although back in 2004 he said silly things about trains). So, it’s very disappointing to see that he is going to vote against the same-sex marriage bill tomorrow.

He has set out a very detailed argument explaining his opposition. Unfortunately, on closer inspection, he appears to have fallen for many of the talking points that gay marriage opponents have used to try and derail this change in the law.

He states: “The gain made by referring to a legally committed gay relationship as a ‘marriage’ rather than a ‘civil partnership’ strikes me as negligible.” There speaks a married heterosexual who has never had the legitimacy of his relationship questioned by anyone. Full marriage rights, rather than separate-but-not-quite-equal civil partnerships, send out the message that same-sex relationships are valued in exactly the same way as opposite-sex ones. That “negligible” gain will, in fact, be a big step towards full equality.

He thinks marriage should be reserved for “procreation”. Sorry childless couples, you have to get divorced!

He thinks it is a “threat to religious liberty”, despite the existence of protections in the bill (in a letter to the Times, three leading QCs are of the view that the so-called “quadruple lock” cannot be challenged in court).

Worst of all, he trots out the tired argument that it will inevitably lead to polygamous marriage being legalised in the future, similar to what happened in… nowhere.

Pugh concludes by stating that he is “tortured by the thought that I might be on the wrong side of history.” Him and about 142 others, at last count.

This week has been a rollercoaster ride for gay rights advocates in America. On Tuesday, an unpleasant and discriminatory anti-marriage law was approved by voters in a referendum in North Carolina. Less than 24 hours later, President Obama, presumably tired of the splinters he’d been getting from sitting on the fence, finally confirmed what almost everybody suspected: he supports marriage for same-sex couples.

This was big news in the States. The ABC network, which conducted the interview, went to extreme lengths to safeguard their exclusive, and then interrupted their normal schedule to carry the newsflash.

It’s a largely symbolic announcement: the issue of who can or cannot get married is largely decided by the individual states, and an intervention by the federal government would be difficult for many different reasons. Even so, for Obama to make a statement now is a brave move. Few issues arouse more passion than LGBT rights, and same-sex marriage in particular is guaranteed to get people riled up. The numbers are moving in the right direction, though: Gallup’s figures show that 50% of Americans support same-sex marriage – down slightly from 53% last year, but a significant increase from the 27% who were in favour the first time the question was asked in 1996. That is a massive shift in just 16 years.

Just before Obama’s announcement, the Guardian crunched some numbers and concluded that the President’s re-election campaign has nothing to fear from his announcement. That’s not a view shared by other pundits, but whatever the numbers say, there’s little doubt that Obama is on the right side of history. As gay people leave the closet behind forever to live openly and proudly in society, the question of equal marriage rights is a matter of “when”, not “if”.

The endorsement of the most powerful man on earth is also a welcome boost to the gay rights issue elsewhere in the world. The timing is very apt for us in the UK, where reports are circulating that the coalition government’s same-sex marriage plans are in turmoil and could be postponed. I have some more thoughts on the pro-marriage campaign here in the UK, but I will save them for a future post. In the meantime, you might want to check out the new campaign (Out4Marriage) which has been set up to complement the existing C4EM petition.

Last month, when the Government launched its consultation on equal(ish) marriage, I predicted “three more years of unpleasant rhetoric from opponents of equality until the law is passed.”

I’ve been proved right, but I didn’t expect it to get this unpleasant this quickly. I’ve previously mentioned Cardinal O’Brien calling gay relationships “grotesque”. We’ve also had a Kent MP claiming that Shakespeare’s plays will have to be rewritten, and the Daily Mail screaming that terms like “mother” and “father” will be replaced by “progenitor”(?!).

The campaign took a new twist on 3rd April, when gay rights group Stonewall relaunched their “some people are gay, get over it!” ad campaign on the back of the current push for equal(ish) marriage rights. The advert is on 1,000 of the capital’s buses, ensuring that the equality message is brought to every community of London.

A response came today from the misleadingly-titled Anglican Mainstream, a Christian organisation which claims to support “traditional” teaching on the family (and you know what that usually means). They booked a smaller ad campaign on 26 London buses, claiming that sexual orientation can be changed with therapy. The ads, which were due to appear from next week, were a spoof of Stonewall’s design and slogan: “NOT GAY! EX-GAY, POST-GAY, AND PROUD. GET OVER IT!”

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Ben Bradshaw MP has got it badly wrong by mocking the Government’s same-sex marriage plans.

“This is pure politics on their part. This isn’t a priority for the gay community, which already won equal rights with civil partnerships. We’ve never needed the word ‘marriage’, and all it’s done now is get a bunch of bishops hot under the collar. We’ve been pragmatic, not making the mistake they have in the US, where the gay lobby has banged on about marriage.”

One part of what he says is true – I think this is a political move on David Cameron’s part. However, while he’s entitled to his view I wish Bradshaw would have thought a little bit before speaking out and making comments that anti-marriage campaigners would jump all over. Like other prominent gay people who have opposed marriage equality – Christopher Biggins, Brian Sewell et al – he seems to have looked at his own life position, where he’s happy and settled and doesn’t want or need to get married, and concluded from that that no other same-sex couple anywhere could possibly want or need it.

It’s also worth pointing out the civil partnerships do not confer exactly the same rights and responsibilities as marriage – there are several important differences, mostly in the areas of inheritance and pension rights.

Oh, and you have signed the petition and submitted a response to the Government consultation, haven’t you?