UK Marriage: Stats and Statements

EDIT 16/7/13

Today the House of Commons passed the Bill for Gender-Neutral Marriage - BBC link here. The points I make in this post and others still stand. The numbers of the petitions respondents have changed (with the c4m one being ignored in the Government's consultation), but the ratio is similar. C4EM (pro marriage redefinition) - 66,175 vs C4M (pro traditional marriage) - 666,483. It is pretty clear that ten times as many people signed the Coalition for Marriage petition.

My first response? This Tweet:

"Gender neutral marriage has passed HoC. Sad day for democracy, religious freedom, and freedom of thought/speech. Grace is needed. "

Original post follows.

The debate in the UK - though, bluntly, its not a debate at the moment - on marriage, its redefinition, and who can take part in in, has reached an interesting turn today.

More of that in a moment - I first want to point out some things. Firstly, and I've refrained from blogging about this before specifically, is the comparison between the C4M and the C4EM campaigns/petitions. The Coalition for Marriage, a grassroots organisation seeking to bring together organisations and individuals from across perspectives, has a petition to retain the traditional and current definition of marriage. The Coalition for Equal Marriage - which supports the Governments aims to redefine marriage also has a petition.

C4M is a 'conservative' position, a 'religious' position, and is backed by less media-loved groups like the Christian Institute and The Evangelical Allians. C4EM is allegedly the voice of the liberal majority, the forward thinkers, the reasonable regular people. Bluntly, I beg to differ. For a variety of reasons. But lets look at something real. The numbers. The actual numbers. Its worth mentioning that I'm no statistician, but I can read, and I can count. Its also worth mentioning that C4M has a more public profile - and the backing of noisy conservatives and church figures. C4EM, on the other hand, is a petition website set up deliberately to spoof and counter the 'Green' one. It's worth mentioning - as a friend pointed out on Facebook - that the C4M campaign was registered in November of 2011 - but the petition did not go live till the 20th feb - the day the C4EM petition was registered. So comparison is essentially reasonable.

That said, we know the power of social media and viral campaigns. 

Think of the recent '#Kony2012' controversy. 

An idea CAN spread via social media. Quickly. Radically. And touch the mainstream media. And the C4EM petition has a more social media-savvy website. And more social media-savvy signatories. At the time of writing, C4EM has had 150 people "+1" the petition on Google Plus - whereas C4M has had none, because it doesn't have a G+ button. Thus far, C4EM has over 16,500 'likes' on Facebook - the most popular social networking website - whereas C4M has only around 3,000. The C4EM petition has been Tweeted over 5,000 times - the C4M petition only 3,000. Its worth noting at this juncture that C4M has a 'share' button - with 12,4000 next to it - this represents a way of sharing at across any network - but I would not be surprised if that is the total number of shares, and emails sent. It's a less helpful number.

One would have though, if the C4EM petition is in line with the Government's stance, public opinion, and has had a better social media presence, that it would have more signatories? Well, simply put, it does not. The Coalition for Equal Marriage currently has just over 33,000 signatories. Bearing in mind that it takes only 100,000 to be heard, according to the e-Petitions thing, this is a good start. But it pales into comparison somewhat to the current numbers on the Coalition for Marriage Petition. 274,000 and rising at the time of writing.

274,000. To retain the Traditional, current legal definition of marriage.

33,000. To change it.

The numbers add up nicely, give or take, to 300,000. Based on my simple mathematics, that means that 1 in 10 people want the definition of Marriage changed. Thats worse than the stats being floated around, and I have no idea how realistic it is as a statistic.

One can reasonably argue - so what? Surely there is a human right to marriage for all, and the Government should legislate for that, regardless of objection? Some people have rather poorly compared the fight for 'Gay Marriage' to liberation from slavery, the battle over inter-racial marriage, or claimed that it is an issue comparable to the decriminalisation of homosexuality. Well, I don't think thats true. Or fair. 

And, apparently, so does the European Court of Human Rights. I am indebted to Cranmer's superb post today on the issue, where he quotes the following;

"The European Convention on Human Rights Does Not require member states Governments' to grant same-sex couples access to marriage"

Thats fairly clear. I blogged previously on some of the flaws with the UK Redefinition of Marriage consultation. But this revelation throws up a bigger issue. The Equalities Minister, Lynn Featherstone, and the consultation, claim that there will be no compulsion on churches (or anyone, religious or otherwise, one hopes) to perform same sex marriages. But is that likely? Well, according to this article from the Mail, and it seems to be a moment of truth, the EU would say that such promises are empty. The Coalition's friendly reassurance that Christians or other people with a conscience/ethics that don't line up with equalities legislation will be able to act thusly, is worth precisely nothing, bunkum, in fact. 

To prove this, I quote from the above article a Discrimination lawyer;

"Once same-sex marriage has been legalised then the partners to such a marriage are entitled to exactly the same rights as partners in a heterosexual marriage. 

This means that if same-sex marriage is legalised in the UK it will be illegal for the Government to prevent such marriages happening in religious premises"

That is fairly final. Its fairly scary.

For a conclusion, I think Cranmer put it perfectly. Read the end of his post, here.

For my part, the numbers and the EU pronouncement add some interesting dynamics to the debate. I look forward to responses.

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I'd love to direct you to my post about this topic, one of the thornier issues in our culture; "Christianity and Homosexuality: A New Approach".