Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

I was pleased and proud early on in the discussions, when the consultation document was launched, to state publicly that I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. I stand by that commitment. For saying that in public, I have been subjected to vilification, abuse, threats to my physical well-being and threats to my office. None has come from constituents, but from people outside my constituency. I have received five letters of support for a change to the sexual arrangements in marriage and 1,000 supporting my stance. The vast majority of my constituents share my view that there is no need for such a change. If I thought that same-sex couples did not have the same rights before the law in any shape or form, I would think again, but civil partnerships, introduced by Parliament well before I was elected, introduced those rights for same-sex couples.

There are differences between the relationships of same-sex couples and heterosexual couples and some have been mentioned. For example, a same-sex couple cannot consummate a marriage. It is a physical impossibility. They cannot produce children without a third party as either a sperm donor or a surrogate is required. Those two things start to change the facts of equality and unequal treatment.

As a party, we have no mandate to introduce any change to the law because we did not promise to do so. When we introduced the consultation document, it did not ask whether we should do this but how to do it. As a result, the petition from the Coalition for Marriage was completely ignored. We have heard legal opinions about challenges. I have sat through almost all the debate and we should remember that Parliament passes laws and Ministers propose laws to Parliament but the courts and lawyers interpret the laws that are passed. We can give no guarantees about people being prosecuted and forced through the courts for expressing their valid opinions.

I worry about what will happen in our schools. Disciplinary codes are the responsibility of head teachers and governing bodies, so will teachers be forced to teach things with which they fundamentally disagree because of their devout religious views? If they choose not to do so, will they be the subject of disciplinary action and sacked? It is all very well to say that the law will protect them, but one person has already lost his job. He won the court case, but he still lost his job. He has not got the court costs back, and is still way out of pocket. People fear that across the land.

When we talk about the matter of faith, a Church or any religious institution is not the building in which it sits—it is the body of the organisation; it is the congregation. Many evangelical Churches have to hire local authority premises, and they will be told that they can no longer hire those premises to practise their religion unless they allow same-sex marriages to be introduced.

Finally, on the key subject of the title of the Bill, the aim of the measure is allegedly to create equality. We will have same-sex marriages and heterosexual marriages—two totally different things, so the object is defeated.