Ben Bradshaw: Pure Politics

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The Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph - the two newspapers that have been relentlessly pushing an anti-gay marriage line - have some good news to report today.
'Gay MP Attacks Government Plans To Allow Same-Sex Couples To Marry', claims the Mail headline.
"One of Britain's first openly gay MPs has criticised Government plans to allow same-sex couples to get married.
"Former Labour minister Ben Bradshaw said the controversial move was 'pure politics' and insisted that Britain's gay community did not need the word 'marriage'."
The Telegraph echoed this trumpeting; "We Don't Need To Get Married, Says Gay MP"
Subtext: You see, even a gay Labour MP doesn't want gay marriage?
Case closed!
Coalition 4 Marriage were just as pleased.
Both papers ran the same quote from Cunts 4 Marriage's Colin Hart; "I welcome the comments by Mr Bradshaw, who has hit the nail on the head when he said that the Government is playing "pure politics" with this issue.
"Civil Partnerships already give the same legal rights to same sex couples that marriage gives to heterosexual couples. This squashes the Government's major argument for forcing through this change."
Those serial gaybashers, The Christian Institute, have also let out a cry of "Hallelujah!"
So he's handed the bigots a gift - well done, Ben.
Mr Bradshaw's comments come from a piece in The Washington Post on Tuesday; 'British Conservatives Lead Charge For Gay Marriage'.
The Post didn't make much of Bradshaw's words - which appear, as Rev. Lovejoy might say, somewhere near the back.

"This is more of David Cameron trying to drag the Conservatives kicking and screaming into the modern world,” said Ben Bradshaw, a ranking Labor lawmaker who in 1997 became one of Britain’s first openly gay members of Parliament. 
“Of course, we’ll support it, but this is pure politics on their part. This isn’t a priority for the gay community, which already won equal rights” with civil partnerships.
He added: “We’ve never needed the word ‘marriage,’ and all it’s done now is get a bunch of bishops hot under the collar. We’ve been pragmatic, not making the mistake they have in the U.S., where the gay lobby has banged on about marriage.”

Ben Bradshaw is an extremely odious and obnoxious individual; indistinguishing himself as an MP by being one of the main and most idiotic cheerleaders of Tony Blair's imperialist wars against Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq.
An apologist for mass murder, no less, so hardly a moral compass.
As Minister Of Health he waived through private management of NHS Trusts.
One of Tony Blair's useful (gay) idiots, he is still an ultra-loyalist.
And what was good enough for Tony - second class citizenship via civil partnerships - is clearly good enough for him.
Although he is obviously correct when he says the noise about gay marriage is mainly a PR exercise for Cameron's Tories.
Just as he is correct, and incongruously candid, when he admits civil partnerships were Tony Blair's stab at pragmatic compromise.
And, to mix my bodily metaphors, I guess that in the Washington Post quotes Ben Bradshaw was, in his own hamfisted way, simply toeing the old party line.

Update: Bradshaw confirmed he had said this on BBC Radio 4's World At One, but stressed that his point was he thought it wasn't a priority, even within a gay policy framework, compared to say tackling homophobic bullying.
The presenter also ended by outing him as "the son of a Church of England vicar"...

• In the interests of balance here's a Conservative politico, Ian Birrell - a former speechwriter for David Cameron - writing for The Guardian yesterday in defence of gay marriage and against 'The Tea Party Tories', those "angry right-wingers who seek a return to the mythical golden age of Thatcher", who oppose it.

Update: Ben Bradshaw interviewed on Gaydar Radio News saying his remarks were "taken out of context rather grotesquely and quoted rather selectively" - then repeats them.