Ross Clark
traditionalists and the church by redefining marriage as something other than a union of one man and one woman?
Clearly, though, MPs could see that gay marriage meant a lot to a large number of people and the country overwhelmingly now supports it. So if similarly the chance to enter a civil partnership would mean a lot to the likes of Rebecca and Charles, why shouldn’t they have their way too? It is illogical and wrong for the Government to have made such a song and dance over gay marriage and then to reject out of hand the case for heterosexual civil partnerships.
It is the same in many areas of politics. Some pressure groups demanding equality are more equal than others. If the statisticians detect that women are under-represented in some profession or over-represented in some unfortunate group, we never hear the end of it. The Women and Equalities Select Committee produces a report in no time demanding change while the Today programme alleges underhand sexism.
Yet who cares when men are found to be under-represented in anything as they now are, for example, among university entrants? The BBC would quite rightly be outraged if an organisation advertised jobs for “whites only”. Yet it thought nothing of advertising last year for two scriptwriters who had
THE Government in other words is forcing the BBC to discriminate against heterosexuals in an effort to reach a target that bears no resemblance to reality. I am all for a liberal society in which it doesn’t matter who you are, where you are born and how you choose to live your private life. I want people to be treated equally. What causes me anger – and I think a lot of other people too – is when rules are twisted to favour a particular pressure group.
I wish the Government could be brave enough to do away with all the silly questionnaires introduced by Blair’s Labour Party in which public bodies demand to know our ethnicity, religion and sexuality even when we are doing something unrelated like complaining about our bin collection.
And while they are about it, they should abolish all targets and quotas. All they achieve is to pigeonhole us into identity groups.
Left to our own devices I am sure we would soon evolve into a society with very little discrimination. Instead we have politicians and judges who seem intent on ingraining discrimination into national life – providing, that is, it is the “right” sort of discrimination.
‘Why shouldn’t they have their way too?’