Britain’s Embrace of Gay Rights
LONDON — It was after I jotted down the words on the placards being waved at the pro-gay-marriage demonstration — “Who do you think made your wedding dress?”; “Sexual orientation is not a belief” — that I realized the downside of taking a toddler to work.
The House of Commons voted at 7 p.m. on Tuesday to allow gay marriage. It was a historic day, which is why the crowd of 100 or so activists had gathered outside Parliament in the hours preceding the vote. I had the rather less historic duty of picking my son up from childcare at 5 p.m.
I flirted with the idea of taking him home to have his dinner, and watching the vote on television. It was cold, spitting with rain, and controlling a child on public transportation at rush hour is never fun. But something told me I should be there.
For Brits, the debate over gay marriage has showcased the weird spectacle of religion intruding into politics. This is something Americans are no doubt used to, but on this side of the Atlantic religion has not been a political factor for a generation or more. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair was an ardent believer, but his spokesman famously shut him up with the words “we don’t do God.”
I have always thought that, since political Christianity seems to have been largely a 2,000-year quest to circumvent the divine instruction to love your neighbor as yourself, it is best to keep religion as distant from politics as possible.
Having a stroller stopped me from pushing into the thick of the crowd, but fortunately I spotted a man standing to one side with a placard labeled“Queers for Jesus” who looked like he would have an interesting opinion.
“I used to support an anti-gay position. I’m bisexual but I used to deny that,” said Symon Hill, a slim, bearded man who in 2011 walked from Birmingham to London as a pilgrimage of repentance for his former homophobia.
His placard featured a quote from Saint Paul’s epistle to the Romans — “Love is the fulfilment of the law” — but he openly admitted that the Bible provides quotes for opponents of gay marriage too.
“That’s the danger with quotes. You can find a quote for anything,” he said.
As it turns out, supporters of gay marriage won 400 to 175 in the House of Commons. The vote left David Cameron’s Conservative Party split wide open, with more than half of the members of Parliament who voted going against the prime minister, who himself proposed the measure allowing for gay marriage as part of his program to modernize his party.
I did not get to see the activists’ response to their victory. Taking my son to work, as I said, had its downsides and he would not tolerate more than 15 minutes of me chatting in the rain. We headed back to the Tube station, passing as we did a lone anti-gay-marriage activist brandishing a biblical quote of his own: “Be sure your sin will find you out.”
My attempt to talk to him was curtailed by a howl from the stroller, and I pushed on against a squall. I was pleased by one thing though. When my son is old enough to marry, this debate will most likely seem as obscure and absurd as debating the decriminalization of homosexuality seems to me now.
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