Originally published at Lesbilicious at the time of the Second Reading on the same sex marriage bill in the House of Commons.
For the most part, there has never been a better time in history to be LGBT on this earth. But every so often, in my Western middle class world, the march towards full equality halts for a breather, or there’s a skirmish by the baggage train, and you get brutally woken up to the fact that, actually, the reason there’s a campaign for equality is because there’s people in the world that actually don’t see you as human and deserving of respect.
I am referring, of course, to the Tories, of whom many appear to think gays are just a hippy newfangled case of political correctness gone mad and can be easily cast aside in pursuit of cheap political potshots at their party apparatus. Tim Loughton MP, egged on by sneaky right-wingers and what passes for the religious right in this country, tabled an amendment this evening to the Same Sex Marriage Bill that would open up civil partnerships to opposite sex couples. Now, I don’t think that there’s actually that many people that think that when same sex marriage comes in, gays should just keep civil partnerships all to ourselves in some sort of amusing gay privilege scenario, but for some reason this amendment would require the entire bill to be overhauled and put it back by several years, possibly cost £4 billion (claimed Cameron, Labour disputes this). The entire situation was less “free the straighties!” than “annoy David Cameron!” Labour, wanting to embarrass the government but also for teh gays, has been umming and ahhing all day over what to do in response.