Marriage Guidance

Like most of the Anglicans in the world, Dr John Sentamu is a product of Anglo-Catholic or Evangelical missionary activity (in his case, it looks as if it might have been both), rather than of anything out of The Vicar of Dibley or even Rev. Moreover, his presence as of right within the parliamentary process bears witness, as so very many other things do, to the fundamentally Christian nature and basis of this State, as such.

With the nature of marriage up for debate, we should seize the opportunity and the initiative. The extension to relatives of the right to contract civil partnerships. The entitlement of each divorcing spouse to one per cent of the other's estate for each year of marriage, up to 50 per cent, and the disentitlement of the petitioning spouse unless fault be proved, thereby restoring the situation whereby, by recognising adultery and desertion as faults in divorce cases, society declared in law its disapproval of them even though they were not in themselves criminal offences.

The entitlement of any marrying couple to register their marriage as bound by the law prior to 1969 as regards grounds and procedures for divorce, and to enable any religious organisation to specify that any marriage which it conducts shall be so bound, requiring it to counsel couples accordingly. And the statutory specification that the Church of England be such a body unless the General Synod specifically resolve the contrary by a two-thirds majority in all three Houses, with something similar for the Methodist and United Reformed Churches, which also exist pursuant to Acts of Parliament, as well as by amendment to the legislation relating to the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy.

That would be a start, anyway. Dr Sentamu, Member of Parliament that you are, over to you.