Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The folly of Cameron’s gay marriage culture war

For some time now, a growing number of Tory MPs have been quietly informing the whips that they will not be voting to support gay marriage. They’ve been getting letters from their constituents, and even those in favour of the idea know that they can’t afford to support it. When a cabinet member spoke to the whips office recently, he was given a startling reply: don’t worry, it will never come to a vote. The consultation is ongoing, but the agenda is being dropped. The effect it’s having on the morale of the Tory grassroots is calamitous. I look at this fiasco in my Daily Telegraph column today, and here are the main points.

1. The kulturkampf over gay marriage defines American politics, not Britain’s. Obama backed it this week, and it was big news. Not because he’ll do anything: the President doesn’t decide such matters, and several states have gone ahead and legalised gay marriage anyway. Obama’s conversion matters because gay marriage is one of those issues that divides America from sea to shining sea. In a way it doesn’t, really, here.

2. The Cameron approach. Cameron has seen gay marriage as a proxy for how his party has changed. ‘I once stood before a Conservative conference and said it shouldn’t matter whether commitment was between a man and a woman, a woman and a woman, or a man and another man. You applauded me for that,’ he said in last year’s conference speech. He is milking the issue for its politics.

3. The Blair approach. This contrasts with the 2004 Civil Partnership Bill, which was certainly opposed by the churches. But hype was kept to a minimum. Blair didn’t claim that his party had changed, that he’d won a victory over the wicked Conservatives and nor did he pose as the Emily Pankhurst of gay rights.

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