Ann Widdecombe: Disturbing

THERE is a disturbing echo in the debate over redefining marriage of the back-to-basics campaign in the Nineties whereby anybody who had ever erred but who defended traditional morality had their private lives exposed even if the events had occurred years earlier. It is bad enough for a gay MP to be subject to death threats because he has come out against Cameron’s proposals* but at least that is easy to dismiss as extreme.

It is different when a married MP, who says in an interview that he believes the current definition of marriage sacrosanct, finds he is then the subject of a two-page spread of recollections in a newspaper, by an ex-mistress whose affair with him ended 12 years ago.

The signal being sent is that anyone who dares speak out will be pilloried with any past indiscretion.

The logic of this is faulty. For example does it mean that anybody who has ever broken the speed limit cannot take a view about road safety?

If a Christian breaks a commandment is he any less a Christian? Do I have to be married in order to defend my view that married couples should have special tax reliefs?

Is an adulterer who chooses to stay with his wife rather than his mistress and is thereafter faithful not an upholder rather than destroyer of marriage?

MPs must be brave in the face of such attacks and defend a definition of marriage that has survived for millennia and is common across the globe.

Ann Widdecombe - Fagburn's favourite columnist - in the Daily Express.

She writes of one Bob Blackman MP, who was outed by his ex-mistress in the Daily Mail on Saturday; Sanctity of marriage? After eleven years in my bed, he's one to talk.
To which the only response has to be; "Ha ha!"

Ms Widdecombe may take a pick 'n' mix approach to the teachings of the Bible, but Fagburn for one does not. 

The good book is quite clear about this, and I'm afraid your good friend Mr Blackman must be put to death forthwith [Deuteronomy 22:22].

* Yeah, that really happened, didn't it Ann?