UKIP have gone so quiet about same-sex marriage. What's that all about?

Is it my imagination, or was it not the case that, prior to the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act being passed, a number of religious adherents, and their mainstream political mouthpiece UKIP, were claiming that it would lead to the European Court of Human Rights imposing "gay marriage" on reluctant religious institutions, on pain of legal sanction?

If it was not my imagination, can anyone explain to me why UKIP and the religious adherents concerned have now gone so quiet about the whole thing? Could it possibly be the case that they know all along that this threat was a vacuous bogeyman, along with the many others, such as the warning gay people would end up marrying stray subatomic particles from Alpha Centauri?

If there had really been any realistic possibility of the European Court of Human Rights imposing same-sex marriage on religious institutions in the UK or anywhere else, I would not have supported this legislation, and I am sure that the very many rational and freedom-loving progressives who generally support equal marriage would have agreed with me. I wrote in Pink News about that issue.

The evidence to contradict these claims of an impending ECHR imposition was absolutely overwhelming, and this evidence relates to the complete absence of any professed concern among those campaigning against equal marriage with regard to the possibility of the ECHR intervening in British law to force religious institutions to comply with equality measures that relate to groups other than gay and lesbian people.

If the ECHR has any intentions to impose equal marriage on reluctant religious institutions in the UK, then one might reasonably expect it to intervene similarly on behalf of other groups protected by equality legislation.

Take, for instance, women. There has been no attempt by the ECHR to impose women priests on the Catholic Church anywhere in Europe. I have not heard a single campaigner against equal marriage who warns of the ECHR imposing same-sex marriage on churches, mention that he has any similar concerns about the ECHR imposing women priests on the Catholic Church.

The claim that the ECHR will impose same-sex marriage on English or Welsh religious institutions is no more credible than any claim (which is not made, of course, because it is so incredible) that the ECHR will impose women priests on the English or Welsh Catholic Church.

Neither has the ECHR imposed women bishops on the Anglican Church. Or forced the Catholic Church to marry divorcés. Or forced any church or other religious institution to host civil partnership ceremonies. And neither have I ever heard a single opponent of same-sex marriage say they fear that the ECHR would do so.

The fact that the ECHR has never behaved in this way, and that the opponents of equal marriage never announce that they expect them to do so, together with the fact that same-sex marriage has existed in the Netherlands for about twelve years without the ECHR imposing it on its churches, are very clear indications of the legal safeguards that protect the religious institutions of EU member states.

Opponents of same-sex marriage who use the ECHR as an excuse for opposing it, are guilty of either very blinkered thinking, or deliberate disinformation. Shocking distortions of the truth, as well as deeply flawed arguments, were peddled by elements within the anti-gay marriage camp during the campaign for equal marriage in England and Wales. They spread unnecessary anxieties, in some cases deliberately, with the effect of inhibiting proper debate and access to accurate information.

So now I come back to the deafening silence from UKIP. If they were genuinely concerned that outraged churches, mosques, synagogues and temples would have same-sex marriage imposed on them by the ECHR, where has that concern gone? Why are they not now exploiting the situation as an opportunity to point to an impending human rights atrocity soon to make its way towards us over the Channel? And if religions are sitting on a cliff edge now, just waiting for this intervention to happen, shouldn't UKIP be pledging to campaign for the repeal of the Act, at least until they bring about their planned withdrawal of the UK from the ECHR?

Or could it possibly be the case that UKIP would rather this chimera now be discreetly brushed under the carpet, after witnessing how equal marriage has done anything but the harm UKIP had hoped for to Conservative Party electoral prospects? 


© Gary Powell, 2013