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Post by Deleted on Feb 6, 2013 11:20:02 GMT 10
from The Guardian....Gay marriage: MPs vote in favour, leaving Cameron adrift from ToriesMore than half of Conservative parliamentary party decline to support PM on issue at heart of his modernising agendaBy NICHOLAS WATT - Chief Political Correspondent | 10:02PM GMT - Tuesday, 05 February 2013Elizabeth Maddison kisses her civil partner Hannah Pearson in front of parliament as MPs voted overwhelmingly in favour of equal mariage. — Photo: Luke Macgregor/Reuters.PARLIAMENT took a historic step towards embracing full equality for gay people when MPs voted on Tuesday overwhelmingly in favour of equal marriage at the end of a charged Commons debate that exposed the deep rift over David Cameron's modernising agenda at the heart of the Conservative party.
The 225-vote majority, greeted with rare applause in the public gallery, was marred for the prime minister, who suffered a humiliating rebuff when more than half of the Conservative parliamentary party declined to support the government on an issue he has personally invested in.
Owen Paterson, the environment secretary, led an unofficial rebellion by an estimated 134 Conservative MPs in rejecting Cameron's plans to legalise same sex marriages. The opponents included Adam Afriyie, the MP for Windsor, who has been running a Tory leadership campaign.
A substantial number of Conservatives, including the attorney general, Dominic Grieve, also abstained in the second reading of the bill, which was subject to a free vote in which MPs were entitled to follow their consciences.
The result meant that the prime minister, who won the support of an estimated 126 Conservative MPs, failed to win over half of his 303 MPs.
But the bill is likely to reach the statute book, assuming it has a safe passage through the Lords, after support from Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs ensured it received an overwhelming second reading.
Desmond Swayne, a Tory whip who used to serve as the prime minister's parliamentary private secretary, proudly announced to the chamber that 400 MPs had voted in favour of the bill, with 175 voting against.
The prime minister welcomed the vote. He tweeted: "Strong views exist on both sides but I believe MPs voting for gay people being able to marry too, is a step forward for our country."
Nick Clegg said: "I genuinely believe that we will look back on today as a landmark for equality in Britain … No matter who you are and who you love, we are all equal. Marriage is about love and commitment, and it should no longer be denied to people just because they are gay."
The Catholic church made clear that it would use the strong objections to the bill voiced by MPs across the house to maintain its campaign against same-sex marriage. The Most Reverend Peter Smith, Archbishop of Southwark, said: "The Catholic Church continues to support marriage understood by society for centuries as the significant and unique lifelong commitment between a man and a woman for their mutual well-being and open to the procreation and education of children. Marriage is rooted in the complementarity of man and woman. For these reasons the Church opposes the government's Bill to re-define marriage. Despite claims by supporters of the Bill that the central issue is one of equality, the Bill actually seeks to re-define marriage and will have consequences for society at large.
"It became clear during today's debate in the House of Commons that the government has not thought through a number of profound problems in the bill raised by members of parliament during the debate. It will be extremely important that the many concerns we and others have expressed will be fully and carefully considered during the next stages of the bill's passage through parliament."
One prominent Tory opponent of the bill endorsed the church's view. The MP said: "This legislation is asking for trouble. The lawyers will be rubbing their hands."
Colin Hart, campaign director of the anti-equal marriage group Coalition for Marriage, said: "The scale of the opposition against the government's profoundly undemocratic plans is astonishing, and sends a clear message to the prime minister that he faces a lengthy and damaging battle to redefine marriage.
"Just a few months ago, if we had predicted this result, no one would have believed us, but our clear and simple message that these proposals are undemocratic and will lead to all sorts of unintended consequences has struck a chord with ordinary voters and now scores of MPs.
"We have consistently warned the legislation contains no safeguards for those who work in the public sector. Top lawyers, with a track record of winning against the government, have said the quadruple lock is not sustainable and instead of trying to answer these questions the PM remains hell bent on ramming this bill through parliament in a dangerously short period of time.
"Mr Cameron hopes that this matter is now settled. He is wrong. His attempts to distract those in his own party and the wider country from the fall out will fail. More importantly this is not the end of the fight against these ill-thought through and divisive plans. There are more votes in the Commons, more speeches, potentially dozens of amendments and then the bill will go to the Lords where the voting arithmetic is very different."
Ben Summerskill, the chief executive of Stonewall, said: "As the last piece of the legislative jigsaw providing equality for gay people in Britain, this is a truly historic step forward. We're absolutely delighted that MPs have demonstrated so overwhelmingly that they're in touch with the 21st century.
"We anticipate, as always, a tough battle in the House of Lords. Happily, the size of the commons majority seen tonight — much larger than for most normal government business — will make it very difficult for peers to suggest that the bill should be rejected.
"Most people in Britain support equal marriage and will be delighted that we're now a step closer to it. We're grateful to the thousands of Stonewall supporters, many of them straight, who played a big part by contacting their MPs in support."
The vote prompted angry recriminations among Tory supporters of reform who criticised Cameron for failing to offer wholehearted support for the reform.
A promised statement by the prime minister was hurriedly recorded for television cameras late on Tuesday afternoon four hours after Maria Miller, the equalities minister, had opened the debate.
One reformer said: "The prime minister couldn't even be bothered to turn up in the chamber. That is so fucking rude. This will have a corrosive effect. The politics around this have been so bad."
The criticism of the prime minister was voiced after MPs from all the main parties lined up on opposing sides. Margot James, Tory MP for Stourbridge, warned her colleagues that the Conservative party would suffer the same fate as the Republicans in the US unless it wholeheartedly embraced social reform.
But Sir Roger Gale, the veteran Tory MP for Thanet North, lambasted the government. "Marriage is the union between a man and a woman — has been historically, remains so. It is Alice in Wonderland territory, Orwellian almost, for any government of any political persuasion to seek to come along and try to rewrite the political lexicon."
Tory modernisers were horrified by the speeches by opponents of reform. One minister said: "Yes we can confidently say that the Tory party is divided — and divided right down the middle on this one. And with the help of four or five speeches we have been taken back more than 50 years to the horrors of the 1950s."
Philip Hammond, the defence secretary who opposes equal marriage, did not vote because he is away on official business. His ministerial colleague Andrew Robathan, one of Cameron's original supporters in the 2005 Tory leadership contest, voted against the bill. He was joined by Mike Penning, the Northern Ireland minister, and by Robert Goodwill, a senior whip.
Nick Clegg failed to win the support of four Liberal Democrat MPs. They were Sir Alan Beith, John Pugh, Gordon Birtwistle and the former children's minister Sarah Teather. Ed Miliband failed to win the support of 22 Labour MPs who voted against the bill. They included the shadow justice minister Robert Flello.www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/feb/05/gay-marriage-vote-cameron-adrift
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Post by pim on Feb 6, 2013 12:15:27 GMT 10
I dunno why you put up this c & p, KTJ. The fact that it was passed by the House of Commons with practically a 2 - 1 majority shows that this is not a "lefty" issue. The issue of gay marriage is now mainstream and has been for some time. That it was sponsored in the House of Commons by a Conservative Prime Minister comes as no surprise to me.
In fact gay marriage is not radical, in spite of what the more hidebound members of the child-molesting Catholic and Anglican hierarchies might try to argue. What they don't understand is that the issue of widespread and systemic child abuse and attendant cover-ups have deprived them of any moral authority to pronounce on these matters. To repeat: gay marriage is not a "radical lefty" cause. In fact, as Christopher Hitchens once argued, and he was right, it's a conservative reform therefore no big deal. To legislate for gay marriage is not to open the gate to bestiality as some of the more insane gibberers of the lunar Right commentariat such as Andrew Bolt have argued. In fact to continue to trot out the "arguments" about something called "traditional" marriage being between men & women and the procreation of children is to misunderstand the nature of bourgeois marriage.
If you read Robert Hughes' classic history of convict Australia The Fatal Shore, turn to Chapter 4 which is called "The Starvation Years". He describes what he calls, coyly, "Australia's first beach party" which basically involved a lot of booze and sex as the convict men & women, having been disembarked in Sydney Cove, made a beeline for each other and shagged themselves stupid. It's like in that joke about the ex-prisoner who gets released from jail after a long stretch in prison and is met by his wife and kid. The two parents speak in code. "FF" says the ex-con. "EF" says his wife. "FF!!" insists the ex-con. "EF!!" replies his equally insistent wife. "WTF!!!" interjects the kid. "Your Mum wants to eat first" explains his Dad. So it was with the convicts. As soon as they got off the ships of the First Fleet it was definitely FF.
In fact there was little in the way of marriage in those early years. The convicts rutted and popped out nameless brats. Not because the convicts didn't have the right to get maried but because the way the class system worked in the England of the time that they'd all come from, only people with property got married - and that was the aristocracy and the monied middle class, or "bourgeoisie" as 19th century socialists called them. And this goes to the nature of modern bourgeois marriage which is that it's all about property and inheritance. The "sacred bonds hallowed by God and His Holy Church for the procreation of children" - who presumably will be baptised as Christians and subsequently confided to the predations of child-molesting christian clergy - is a pious patina, pretty wrapping like a Christmas present. Marriage has always been about property. It used to be confined to the landowning aristocracy in the Middle Ages but as property ownership extended beyond the aristocracy into the rising middle classes they wanted a guarantee that their estates would pass o their children, and marriage was the pathway. To extend marriage to gays & lesbians is to do nothing more than recognise the power and importance of the Pink Dollar.
In fact gay marriage is such a conservative reform that revolutionary socialists of 100 years ago and more would have opposed it. Engels himself exposed and condemned "bourgeois marriage" in his The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State. So for gay marriage to be adopted in Australia as a "progressive" and "left" issue that is "owned" by the Greens to me is laughable. It exposes firstly the hidebound nature of public discourse in Australia about the issue, secondly it exposes the Greens as political opportunists and thirdly it exposes the utter and complete degeneracy of the so-called "Left", that an institution that their feminist mothers of a generation ago condemned and rejected as "bourgeois" should now be trumpeted by the current generation, with that appallingly backward ignoramus Sarah Hanson-Young in the vanguard, with the phony cry of "mariage rights".
So should gays have the right to marry? Of course they should. But without the phony posturing and disingenuous left/right cant! It's such a conservative reform that it's supported by people on both sides of the political spectrum.
So do it. And get rid of the distraction.
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Post by garfield on Feb 6, 2013 12:21:44 GMT 10
I'm happy for the gays, it must be hell for them having to root each others shitholes out of wedlock.
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Post by matt on Feb 6, 2013 17:00:05 GMT 10
Who cares if the gays can marry?
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Post by slartibartfast on Feb 6, 2013 17:05:50 GMT 10
They do!
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Post by Deleted on Feb 6, 2013 19:09:15 GMT 10
Marriage issue aside and just on observations I don't know what is happening in society where there seems to be more gay people about that in the past decade or so, as in young males, girls it harder to pick, maybe it's fashion and these males are not gay, but when you see blokes who have gone to a hairdresser to get fancy waves and colours, and sometimes make up, puny looking as with no muscles one does ponder if such societal development if it is a environmental factor of the planet dealing with over population, or a genetic trait. On the other end of the scale are young blokes with pumped bodies and coloured skin rather than hair as in tattoos..with over the top antics in extreme sports, I don't know what to make it of it...other than weird in it..... And a happy 'Waitangi' Day KiwiThrottles...
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Post by matt on Feb 6, 2013 19:18:24 GMT 10
If they enjoy sodomy, that is fine, but PLEASE keep it in the bedroom!
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Post by Deleted on Feb 6, 2013 19:23:19 GMT 10
If they enjoy sodomy, that is fine, but PLEASE keep it in the bedroom! Are you trying to say that you've NEVER, EVER had sex outside a bedroom?
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Post by caskur on Feb 6, 2013 19:30:23 GMT 10
I'm happy for the gays, it must be hell for them having to root each others shitholes out of wedlock. It's even worse when they develop bladder cancer.
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Post by caskur on Feb 6, 2013 19:31:03 GMT 10
If they enjoy sodomy, that is fine, but PLEASE keep it in the bedroom! And keep kids away from them.
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Post by Salem on Feb 6, 2013 20:23:22 GMT 10
I'm not sure why people, mainly men, are so obsessed with sodomy. Like as they've never had anal sex with a woman. And some forget that half of the gays are lesbians so where does sodomy fit in with them? Seriously, sodomy occurs in most marriages, I don't get why some are so fixated on the practice. Its so commonplace that its unremarkable.
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Post by caskur on Feb 6, 2013 20:55:29 GMT 10
I'm not sure why people, mainly men, are so obsessed with sodomy. Like as they've never had anal sex with a woman. And some forget that half of the gays are lesbians so where does sodomy fit in with them? S eriously, sodomy occurs in most marriages, I don't get why some are so fixated on the practice. Its so commonplace that its unremarkable. No it doesn't. What a load of shit!
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Post by pim on Feb 6, 2013 21:38:58 GMT 10
I'm not sure why people, mainly men, are so obsessed with sodomy. I think I probably agree with you there, Salem - kinda! It is men who tend to obsess about sodomy. Some men!! Let's not get carried away and generalise too much! Not all men obsess about sodomy. I'm a ferociously heterosexual male. It's highly unlikely that a woman is going to want to sodomise me so as far as I personally am concerned what is there to obsess about? There's a valid point somewhere in that statement struggling to get out which is that anal sex does occur between some men and women. It doesn't happen in every heterosexual relationship. Your point about half the "gays" being lesbians is correct to the point of being a no-brainer. Where does anal sex figure in lesbian sex? I honestly have no idea!! I suspect I'll go to my grave in blissful ignorance of that one! I guess where there's a will, there's a way!! I'd accept your closing remark that it's so commonplace that it's unremarkable but it's drawing a long bow to claim as you do that it occurs in most marriages. How could you know that? I certainly don't know that!! But OK, forget about my nitpicking! You make a basic point which I agree with, which is that sodomy is commonplace and it's no big deal so why obsess about it. I definitely agree with that.
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Post by matt on Feb 7, 2013 1:31:27 GMT 10
I will never do anal, it is filth. A man should not degrade his woman like that.
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Post by matt on Feb 7, 2013 1:33:43 GMT 10
I'm not sure why people, mainly men, are so obsessed with sodomy. Like as they've never had anal sex with a woman. And some forget that half of the gays are lesbians so where does sodomy fit in with them? Seriously, sodomy occurs in most marriages, I don't get why some are so fixated on the practice. Its so commonplace that its unremarkable. The lesbians are able to stimulate with their tongues as well as use toys.
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Post by caskur on Feb 7, 2013 1:57:10 GMT 10
I will never do anal, it is filth. A man should not degrade his woman like that. very sick and unsafe practice.. both my husband and I vomit at the thought! ugh!
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Post by Deleted on Feb 7, 2013 7:21:30 GMT 10
<Sigh!> Once again, what could have been an intelligent debate on the legitimacy (or otherwise) of gay marriage is dragged to the gutter by those seemingly more obsessed with the mechanics of anal sex than likely the gays themselves are. A pity.
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Post by matt on Feb 7, 2013 9:08:51 GMT 10
<Sigh!> Once again, what could have been an intelligent debate on the legitimacy (or otherwise) of gay marriage is dragged to the gutter by those seemingly more obsessed with the mechanics of anal sex than likely the gays themselves are. A pity. Typical accusation. I am saying that anal sex is filthy, period. Whether it is a man doing it to a woman or a man doing it to a man.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 7, 2013 9:57:18 GMT 10
Typical response from you, Matt. I know what you said, I can read...the same you have said on a myriad other threads.
Thanks for reinforcing my statement, though.
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Post by caskur on Feb 7, 2013 10:49:45 GMT 10
I will never do anal, it is filth. A man should not degrade his woman like that. "his woman" !!! How degrading is that?! his woman... her man... that isn't degrading... wtf is wrong with you?... no doubt you're the type that are all for uni-sex toilets or something!
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Post by pim on Feb 7, 2013 11:12:01 GMT 10
Grim, re. your #17 and #20: You're right. Obsessives like Matt and Caskur are the lead in the saddlebags that attend any discussion about gay marriage. I should include Garfield too with his smutty #2.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 7, 2013 11:31:36 GMT 10
Well I was interested in the sociology aspect that there are more gay men around, and all people are interested in is arseholes.....now I'm convinced you are all weirdo's..
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Post by pim on Feb 7, 2013 11:38:20 GMT 10
To the tune of "Silent Night"?
OK I guess if you want to trivialise Grim's serious, valid and important point.
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Post by caskur on Feb 7, 2013 12:29:27 GMT 10
It's all part of the Christian sexist doctrine. "Ownership of a woman." Blimey ... the very word "woman" is a load of crap. As if females came out of men! And wives own their husbands according to the Bible so it cuts both ways.
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Post by caskur on Feb 7, 2013 12:31:38 GMT 10
Grim, re. your #17 and #20: You're right. Obsessives like Matt and Caskur are the lead in the saddlebags that attend any discussion about gay marriage. I should include Garfield too with his smutty #2. Don't like what we write, huh?... we're writing the thoughts of the majority...and minority are liars. That's it in a nutshell.
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