Critics of gay marriage ‘are Neanderthals’
AT HIS 2011 party conference speech, with his stock with Conservative backbenchers low and falling, Cameron needs to avoid anything that is neither in his Election manifesto nor that threatens what he is trying to achieve on the economy and core domestic policy issues – yet introduce something utterly unexpected is exactly what he does.
Out of a blue sky, he announces that he is consulting over the possibility of legalising gay marriage.
A bomb detonates in the party. Few issues so divide opinion among Tories at large or even within No10. Many see it as a self-inflicted wound. Others see it as authentic Cameron, pursuing an issue regardless of the hostility it arouses.
Cameron believes gay and straight people should be treated the same. At Oxford and beyond, some of his closest friends are gay. Steve Hilton wanted to put gay marriage in the 2010 Tory manifesto but Cameron’s press adviser, former News Of The World editor Andy Coulson (later jailed over the hacking scandal) came out ‘dead against it’.
There was ambivalence towards it even from the gay community. ‘What’s the point if it is going to p*** off a lot of people and not win us any votes?’ was the view of Cameron’s team. So it was dropped.
But Cameron returned to it in 2011 partly because the Lib Dems were going to announce their support for it anyway. A key role was played by Cameron’s adviser Michael Salter, described as his ‘go-to gay’.
Cameron has said: ‘Marriage is special… whether you are a man and a woman, a woman and a woman, or a man and another man.’
Opposition from Tory MPs grows but Cameron won’t budge. He says: ‘Unless you are making some Neanderthal judgment on gays, those who are gay should have the same rights as those who are not.’
Party strategist, Australian Lynton Crosby, warns it is a distraction (even though he personally supports the move): ‘You’re f***ing off the party big time.’ And Tory MP Liam Fox articulates the views of many Conservative MPs: ‘It represented the victory of liberal-dinnerparty, metropolitan thought over the wider party.’ But Cameron presses ahead and gay marriage becomes legal in 2013.