Livre d'Or

Thank you, I'm glad you contributed your perspective on this issue. I agree that Gerv is not in any way an ally, and I think he's wrong, morally and politically, in his views about marriage, but I do think there's space between support and hate speech, and I think he's in that space.

The background you may not have is that in the UK we have "civil partnership" for same-sex couples; it's kind of a stupid compromise, but the point is that it meets all the criteria for current government benefits, it just isn't called marriage. Indeed, there are laws on the books that even private institutions aren't allowed to treat civil partners any differently from married couples; a Christian-run B&B was successfully sued because they wouldn't let same sex civil partners share a double room, because they weren't "married". So it's not that Gerv or his crowd are trying to deny same-sex couples the human right to have their relationship recognized by the state or any of the associated benefits, it's that he doesn't want to call it marriage because he thinks the word married has a specific Christian technical meaning.

I agree that the dual system, even if on paper civil partnerships and marriages confer exactly the same rights, is messed up. And the problem of trans people being forced to divorce or separate and then remarry or recivilize is one of the big flaws in the system, one I have tried pointing out to Gerv. But I don't think it's hate speech to argue for two parallel systems with different names; after all, that is a compromise that prominent gay rights orgs in this country were prepared to accept.

I suspect that you could probably tell Gerv a few things about the consequences you end up with if you try to hand over control of a civil institution like marriage to the religious authorities! But that's basically what he wants, he is anti-secularism and wants the Church to have a stronger political role, but not particularly anti-gay. Most of my friends are secularists, as am I, but I don't think that all decent moral people must inevitably be secularist.