UK Prime Minister: ‘Redefining marriage is one of my proudest moments’
British Prime Minister David Cameron told a town hall meeting near Liverpool on the weekend that making same-sex "marriage" legal in Britain and Wales was one of his "proudest" accomplishments.
When asked what he thought were his most significant achievements, he rated improving the UK economy as something he would "treasure," but that passage of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill was his personally proudest moment.
“I did get a lot of letters from men who said, because of the changes you made, I have been able to marry the person I love. That was great,” Cameron said, according to a report by homosexual news service Pink News.
He said that he has gotten "lots" of invitations to same-sex weddings but has yet to accept any. "I haven’t been to one yet," he said, adding, "I’m sure I will soon.”
While Cameron has been unequivocal in his support for homosexualism, his stand has not been without consequence for his political ambitions.
Before the legislation passed and was given Royal Assent in July 2013, political and religious leaders were already saying Cameron’s insistence on pushing through same-sex “marriage” would almost certainly cost him the government in the 2015 election.
A ComRes poll commissioned by the pro-traditional marriage group Campaign for Marriage in February 2013 found that 20 percent of Conservative Party voters agreed with the statement, “I would have considered voting Conservative at the next election but will definitely not if the Coalition Government legalises same-sex marriage."
The numbers suggested that a small majority of party voters support same-sex “marriage,” but the loss of support of 20 percent of voters would be enough to make it impossible for the Conservatives to win in the next general election.
Moreover, 62 percent of voters of all political stripes told the ComRes poll they believed Cameron’s motivation for supporting gay "marriage" had more to do with making the party seem “trendy and modern” than with “equality.”
Another poll revealed that even among homosexual activists, same-sex "marriage" was low on their priority list and Cameron was seen as something of a poseur for pushing through the legislation.
The poll, conducted by ComRes at the request of Catholic Voices, found that just half of gays and lesbians in the UK consider it important to extend marriage to same-sex couples, while only 27 percent say they would marry their partner if they could.
A quarter of respondents said there was no need to introduce gay “marriage,” because civil unions already provided all the same rights and privileges as marriage.
The survey showed almost half of respondents agreeing that they believed Cameron was only promoting gay “marriage” “to make his party look more compassionate rather than because of his convictions.”
After the passage of the bill, Colin Hart, director of the Coalition for Marriage, saidthat David Cameron “needs to remember that the Coalition for Marriage has nearly 700,000 supporters, nearly six times the number of members of the Conservative Party."
These, he said, are “just ordinary men and women, not part of the ruling elite. They are passionate, motivated and determined to fight on against a law that renders terms like husband and wife meaningless and threatens one of the foundations of the institution of marriage: fidelity and faithfulness.”
Former government minister Sir Gerald Howarth criticized the whole process that brought the bill to completion, saying the Conservatives had “absolutely no mandate” to redefine marriage. He described it as having “been bulldozed through both Houses” with just two hours of debate. It is, he said, “an absolute parliamentary disgrace.”
“I think the Government should think very carefully in future if they want the support of these benches. Offending large swathes of the Conservative Party is not a good way of going about it.”
Many once-loyal Conservative voters are abandoning the Tories and joining the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) which opposes “gay marriage” on libertarian grounds of religious freedom.
The leader of the UK’s right-leaning party, Nigel Farage, has stated that his party's opposition to same-sex “marriage” is based on two points.
"First, we did not think it should have been made a political priority at a time of many other pressing issues and pointed out that the measure had no mandate from the electorate,” he said.
“Secondly we were concerned that because of the role of the European Court of Human Rights in British law that faith communities which had strong objections were at risk of being forced to conduct gay marriages.”
“There is an ongoing debate within UKIP about how we can protect faith communities from ultimately being compelled to conduct same sex marriages against their beliefs and their will,” he explained. “We note that some gay rights activists are already talking about taking legal action in Strasbourg to force this issue.”
