As promised, something on how, no, civil partnerships were not "intended as gay marriage", are not "understood as gay marriage", and are not "accepted as gay marriage". Nor is the absence of any requirement for consummation what a commenter rather unfortunately terms "a fudge".
We may fund forced abortion in China and elsewhere, but it is impossible to overstate the constitutional crisis that would follow from any legislative attempt formally to require anyone in this country to have an abortion.
We may have eroded the special character of Sunday to such an extent that many people are effectively compelled to work on it, but it is impossible to overstate the constitutional crisis that would follow from any direct attempt to write that compulsion into law, or formally to declare Sunday a normal shopping day.
We may have deregulated drinking and gambling to an alarming extent, but it is impossible to overstate the constitutional crisis that would follow from any legislative attempt to abolish all restrictions on them.
And we may long ago have come to the humane and necessary conclusion that homosexual acts between consenting adults in private were no business of the criminal law, but it is impossible to overstate the constitutional crisis that would follow from any legislative attempt to make the acquisition of certain civil privileges conditional upon engagement in such acts, or indeed in any form of sexual act other than that between husband and wife. As Leo Abse himself said on the fortieth anniversary of his Bill's becoming law, "merely because something ought not to be a criminal offence, that does not make it a public good".
It is a pity that, by abolishing the fault basis in divorce, we have abolished the State's, and thus the community's, expression of disapproval of adultery and desertion even though neither of them has ever been a criminal offence. And it is more than a pity that we have, for the time being, restricted civil partnerships to unrelated same-sex couples even though, with no requirement for consummation nor any constitutional possibility of such a requirement, civil partnerships do not in principle have anything to do with homosexuality.
We have privileged subscription to the scientifically baseless and historically illiterate theory that an inclination towards homosexual acts is somehow an identity, that persons rather than only acts are homosexual or heterosexual, and that those terms are nouns as well as adjectives. That absurd notion is barely, if yet, forty years old, and it was invented in, by and for urban, coastal American subcultures that defined themselves by their sexual abuse of teenage boys. Britain's pre-eminent homosexualist organisation takes its name from a centre of such abuse.
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David, the only reason civil partnerships have come into existence is because of decades of lobbying by civil rights activists to extend the right of marriage to gay couples. The fact that civil partnerships fall slightly short of full gay marriage, in not requiring consummation, does not alter the fact they exist solely as a means of extending the rights of marriage to gay couples. If you disagree, I would be interested to hear why you think they came into existence? What was the intention of those who passed the law?
ReplyDeleteMore to the point, your argument that it's OK - indeed, laudable - to grant certain civil privileges on the condition of heterosexual intercourse, but would provoke not just natiaonal debate but a full-blown constitutional crisis to do so for homosexual intercourse seems to rely on there being some qualitative, rather than merely mechanical, difference between the two. What could that be?
If you have to ask, then there is no point telling you.
ReplyDelete"Slightly"?
The closed thought world of the gay lobby, David. They honestly cannot believe that there are people who do not agree with them.
ReplyDeleteLook how they react when their privileges are challenged. What I am proposing would not affect them even the tiniest bit. But they will not have it.
ReplyDeleteLord Roger, a Supreme Court Justice said today "sexual identity is inherent to one's very identity as a person"
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1292715/Gay-asylum-seekers-win-legal-battle-stay-Britain.html
Yet another reason not to have a Supreme Court.
ReplyDeleteI don't know which is more shocking, a philosophically, historically, anthropologically and scientifically illiterate lawyer or a dangerously politicized judge. Say it ain't so.
ReplyDeleteNow that you have a Supreme Court, you could abolish Parliament and elections because anything they do can be struck down with no possibility of appeal. Struck down by some philosophically, historically, anthropologically and scientifically illiterate lawyer who has become a dangerously politicized judge. Welcome to our world.
To be fair, sexual identity is inherent to one's very identity as a person. The condition of being male or female, written into every cell of the body, is precisely so inherent. That is what he meant. Isn't it?
ReplyDeleteHaving abolished the Law Lords in the service of the peculiarly American theory of the separation of powers, They presumably also wish to abolish all quasi-judicial functions of Ministers or of local council chairmen, as well as the role of the judges in making the whole of the Common Law, and much else besides. All because of something that They once heard on The Wire, or The Simpsons, or whatever.
And then what? As will eventually be found to be the case, both trial by jury and trial by magistrates are contrary to Their other pet cause, the jurisprudence of a foreign court interpreting a foreign document. They, who object to the quasi-judicial powers of Ministers accountable to Parliament, also loathe both juries and magistrates, and for the same reason, namely hatred of the people at large.
Without a resolution of the House of Commons (itself elected more proportionally and from candidates selected by means of something like an open primary system), no ruling of the European Court of Justice, nor or of the European Court of Human Rights, nor of the Supreme Court, nor pursuant to the Human Rights Act, should have any effect in the United Kingdom. The High Court of Parliament is precisely that: The High Court of Parliament.
And as such, it cannot co-exist with a Supreme Court detached from Parliament and, being Supreme, both enjoying and, soon enough, exercising the right to strike down the Statute Law with no one to in any position to do anything about this monstrous overthrow of democracy and liberty.
The present judiciary is riddled with old Communist Party activists and the like from back in the day. As in the form of New Labour, a project which now controls all parties, the student sectarian Left of the 1968 generation has now staged its coup.
There still have to be Law Lords, so that they can serve on the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which remains the final court of appeal from several Commonwealth countries. But no longer has any role in the country where it is located, from the citizens of which its members are drawn, and of the Parliament of which those judges remain members even if they do not function as such. Oh, well, the ageing 68ers do love Monty Python.
If we must have it, we should elect it.
ReplyDeleteWell, it has 12 members, so why not? One from each of the 12 divisions already used for Strasbourg. Two of those are Scotland and Northern Ireland, each of which already gets one seat on the Supreme Court. A by-election each time one of them dies or retires.
ReplyDeleteBut we shouldn't have the thing at all.
This appeal should probably have been allowed. But certainly not on the grounds given.
Good points. Why not just make civil partnerships open for people like my neighbor's unmarried sisters who live together? Surely they love and care for each other and constitute a household and a kind of family unit. The problem is that they are not an unrelated same-sex couple.
ReplyDeleteAnd Mr. Lindsay is 100% correct about the ghastly American subcultures that spawned the modern homosexualist movement. Many of the original centers of the movement were Mafia-owned clubs that were basically brothels.
I think you put your finger on an important point when you say that twisted language is part of the problem.
ReplyDeletePeople talk of legalising "gay marriage", when it has never been illegal, though many gay people might not have the inclination.
What they mean is "homosexual marriage", which is ontologically impossible. You can no more legalise homosexual marriage than you can legalise puppies growing on pear trees, though one could pass a law yo say that from henceforth pears shall be called puppies.