equal marriage Archives - Page 5 of 19 - What is in Kelvin's Head?

Just watch this video – there’s people and places that you may well recognise.

I’m very pleased to be one of the faces in the video above, which has been produced by the Equality Network to galvanise the last months of the campaign for equal marriage in Scotland. Political leaders, celebrities, thinkers and so-called ordinary folk are uniting around the idea that same-sex couples should have access to the same rights, priviledges and responsibilties as straight couples.

It’s time for the law in Scotland to allow same-sex couples to marry. It’s time for the law to be changed to allow a couple to stay married when one goes through a gender transition. It’s time for gay and lesbian couples to have not merely the same rights as straight couples but also the same social status. In short, it is time for change.

The video has been many months in the planning and producing. I think it is exciting, joyful and a credit to all involved.

One of the most impressive thing about the equal marriage campaigning in Scotland is that it has been relentlessly positive.

I was partly preaching about this yesterday, the day that the Sunday Mail (which is not the Mail on Sunday!) came out gloriously in favour of the equal marriage campaign with a double page spread and an excellent leader column. The Sunday Mail is the widest read paper in Scotland, the Sunday sibling of the Daily Record. I’ll post that sermon on here in a day or two. For now, I’ll just watch the video above one more time.

Equal Marriage is mainstream. Not, as someone suggested to me recently, merely the concern of a tiny minority.

This is an idea whose time has come.

Update
Beth’s blogging about this too – she was there!
And so is Christine McIntosh – she thinks it is time for change

Watching the House of Lords

The internet is a wonderful thing and means you can watch all kinds of things you would never have been able to see in the past. Yesterday, I found myself watching the House of Lords discuss whether or not I was fully human.

At least, that’s what it felt like to me.

I’m a great believer in debate and understand why things need to be challenged and fought over and argued through. It is right and proper that parliamentary processes run their course. But can you imagine what it feels like for me to watch that being done over the Equal Marriage legislation. This week it is the Westminster legislation and soon it will be the Holyrood legislation.

Once you’ve accepted that the right to marry a partner of your chosing without regard to gender is a human right, it is as though people are arguing over your very humanity.

Some people go mad, of course – both victims and perpetrators.

In many ways it would be easiest to turn off the stream from the House of Lords. It would be so much easier not to see Bishops from the Church of England saying such calculated and vile things about one. The script that seems to be coming from them this week is “The church hasn’t been nice to gay people. Perhaps it should be nicer. But I’m still not going to support equality for gay people.” What makes it so horrible is that it is done with knowledge aforethought.

However, it is almost impossible not to watch it. It is a fascinating, almost sinister, watch.

This argument is only going in one direction.

This video from the Irish campaign for marriage equality still rings true at the moment though.

[Memo to self: Don’t forget to ask every candidate in next General Election whether or not they are committed to removing the bishops from the House of Lords]

It’s Time

Watching the House of Lords

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