Monumental changes to our society

After this week’s vote in favour of gay marriage nothing will ever surprise me again. It has been a matter of only a few years in which this monumental change to the definition of marriage has been accomplished.

The opinion polls tell the story of a minority in favour of this unlikely social revolution turning to a majority within an incredibly short space of time. Those of us who hold the tried and tested view of marriage of millennia could never have envisaged becoming a minority in the blink of an eye.

Yet we are a sizeable minority and we are not just going to go away. In an article in The Times, on Monday, government minister, Maria Miller, argued that those of us who have a practising faith will be unaffected by this change. I wonder whether this is true from the very outset.

I genuinely do not think that gay and lesbian couples can enter into marriage. I realise that they are entering into a legal contract, recognised by the state and erroneously described as ‘marriage’, but they are being deceived that it is actually ‘marriage’.

Now can Maria Miller give assurances that people like me can continue to deny that the contract conferred by the state on gay couples as socalled ‘equal marriage’ is ‘marriage’ at all?

In the past, there has been no dispute at all that all first marriages are indeed marriage. This will not now be the case at all. The redefinition of marriage creates apartheid around marriage and division in church and state for a very long time to come. The tolerance that Maria Miller talks about cannot last because the modern mantra of ‘equality’ has to keep imposing itself and expanding its influence.