UK Marriage: What Can I Do?

In a previous post I summarised Why I personally am concerned that the Government is making a mistake in pressing forward with its plans to redefine marriage. In this post, I want to share ways in which you can make your voice heard (obviously, these apply to you regardless of whether you agree with me or not - we live in a democracy and as such everyone has a right to an opinion, which is one of the issues...), in the relatively short remaining time.

The first vote in the Commons is tomorrow, Tuesday the 5th of February. That means its too late to write a letter formally, but you can still Tweet or email your MP with your views. You can find out your MP's current views - and the contact details - via the page titled 'support' over at the C4EM website. Obviously I would urge you to sign the C4M petition instead - you can find it here - but its helpful of the C4EM guys to give us the information we need. Do it. Tweet. Email. Call the constituency office if you can. It matters.

The most important thing you can do, however, is pray. The Evangelical Alliance encouraged its member churches to have a National Day of Prayer for Marriage yesterday - and published an excellent prayer on the subject. Pray that, eventually, marriage would remain marriage, and the fudges proposed by the current Government would be forgotten and we can all get on with things.

If you remain unconvinced that this matters, or simply want to read some more about the topic to inform your prayers and communication with you MP, then I'd recommend the following posts, papers and articles:

David Burrowes - "It's Time to Stand up for the Conservative and Progressive Institution of Marriage" - here an articulate and principled Tory MP writes a concise and powerful article that does exactly what it says on the tin. Burrowes is the MP who first challenged the government on it - and recently again recieved death threats for his stance, echoing my original post, "Having Opinions about Marriage".

Philip Blond and Roger Scruton - "Marriage: Union for the Future or Contract for the Present" - this ResPublica Green Paper is a powerful challenge to the Government's stance from a secular perspective. Whilst I disagree with their 'conclusion and recommendations' for churches, this is a powerful piece of writing. Burrowes links to this paper in his HuffPost piece above.

Julian Rivers (The Jubilee Centre) - "Redefining Marriage: The Case for Caution" - a powerful, intelligent and thoroughly referenced piece on this issue with a sobering conclusion. If you read one thing, probably read this.

Charles Moore - "This Equality Obsession is Mad, Bad, and Very Dangerous" - in this Telegraph opinion piece, Moore challenges firmly the modern obsession with misunderstood Equality. Again I am not in 100% agreement with everything he says, but he makes some salient points.

John Milbank - "Gay Marriage and the Future of Human Sexuality" - here a Nottingham Theology professor offers a powerful analysis of the issues, including general comment on sexuality and culture. Well worth reading.