Coalition: Marriage Wrecker

This story - Cracks In The Coalition Marriage - made the front page of The Sunday Telegraph today.

The start of a party conference is when broadsheets try and do some serious yacht-rocking, often with a serialisation of some "tell-all memoirs" - as with Damian McBride's in the Mail before Labour's last week.*
Happily for Dave in Telegraphland this has been overshadowed by his mortgage stunt, "foreign beggars", and the ghost of Margaret Thatcher.
They still must consider gaymarriage the most damning extract from In It Together; Matthew d'Ancona's "insider's story about the coalition", which "reveals furious rows between ministers threatened to tear it apart – and David Cameron’s support for gay marriage provoked such a backlash he wondered if it was worth the cost."
The Telegraph was the newspaper most virulently opposed to equal marriage, of course [See Fagburn passim ad nauseum].

'What they don’t want is to roll up to a church and find Derek and Clive having their wedding”: thus, in a conversation early in 2013, did the Prime Minister explain to his advisers the resistance of Tory party members to same-sex marriage.
The image of Dudley Moore getting married to Peter Cook – the original, awesomely profane Derek and Clive – was an arresting one, and not quite what Cameron had meant. His point was that Conservative activists were generally opposed to gay marriage only if it meant change in their places of worship.
A secular reform could be managed, he believed. As he would later admit to the same colleagues, he had radically underestimated the scale and depth of the hostility in his party to same-sex unions...

You can read the extract here - I have some things to do, but will collect my doubtless thrilling thoughts, and a bit later Fagburn may finally reveal my big conspiracy theory about how Cameron came to support gay marriage.

It's so exciting I guarantee your knob will drop off.**

[Edit: Now decided to save it for my tell-all memoirs -Dave's said it's all balls, by the way, but he would say that, wouldn't he?].

The cartoon above - drawing a somewhat tenuous link between same-sex unions and the European Union - is from the Telegraph in January - if you want to Google them there's a heck of a lot of cartoons portraying Cameron and Clegg as a gay couple.
HAHAHA! etc.
This one pleased the Coalition For Marriage so much, they put it on their website. 

* Fagburn feels the need to point out once again that McBride's publisher, Iain Dale, is a violent hooligan, who Sussex Police have left free to troll the streets.

** Offer only applies to men. Sorry.

Sunday Telegraph: Letters Of The Week

SIR – Peter Oborne (Opinion, June 9) hits the nail firmly on the head when he writes that the Prime Minister ought to stand up for “Conservative values” and spell out the importance of modernisers letting sleeping dogs lie.

Surely, though, the problem is that David Cameron is the moderniser-in-chief of his party. What sleeping dog deserved to be let lie more than gay marriage? There was no ground-swell of public opinion demanding it. Anyone with the slightest understanding of grass-roots Tories knew that it would cause significant dismay.

Yet, despite neither manifesto commitment nor inclusion in the Coalition Agreement, Mr Cameron steamrollered it through parliament with indecent haste, enlisting Labour support in order to offset the opposition within his own party. I fear that any hope of Mr Cameron embracing traditional Conservative values and abandoning “modernisation” is, to say the least, remote.

John Waine
Nuneaton, Warwickshire

SIR – I agree that Conservative radicalism can go too far. But even voters grateful for Michael Gove’s mission to improve our children’s schooling are unlikely to digest the force-feeding of them and us all with the paradox of gay marriage.

Anna Rist
Cambridge

SIR – Iain Martin (Opinion, June 9) asks why top Tories spend so much time placating Nick Clegg. The answer is obvious: David Cameron is a closet liberal. He is happy to promote gay marriage, wants to re-introduce price controls – starting with minimum prices for alcohol – is an enthusiastic hider away of tobacco, and is an interventionist between our GPs and ourselves in the matter of food and our chosen lifestyle. When will he want to enter our bedrooms?
Mr Clegg can make as big a fool of himself as he likes, but not aided by a man who claims to be a Conservative.
Dick Lawrie
March, Cambridgeshire

Sunday Telegraph.
Good points, all well made.

Letters: Bathos Defined

Dear Mr Jones,
I am writing to inform you that I don't agree that children shouldn't be brought up by lesbian or gay people. My name is [name redacted] and I am a child with lesbian parents. I have got a little sister called [name redacted] for short and I have got two mums, one is called [name redacted] and the other is called [name redacted]. I have been brought up perfectly well so I don't see any point in you saying that. Me and some of my other friends agree that you can be brought up by anyone who will love you and care for you and make sure your [sic] happy. Please write back!
Yours sincerely,

[name redacted].

Letter to David Jones MP.
A scan of the hand-written note was sent to Jones via Twitter.
When picked up by the IoS, the 8 year-old girl's mother asked for her identity to be protected.*

SIR – As an old-fashioned conservative, I thought that it was our job to protect the institutions and ways of life that people hold dear. These Tory modernisers who are attempting to redefine the sanctity of marriage should take heed.
By definition, gay marriage can never be upheld in the eyes of the Lord, nor I should imagine, by middle-class Tory Britain.

John Bridge
Southend-on-Sea, Essex

Letter to the Sunday Telegraph.

* This has been widely ignored - sad when it's by journalists who first learned of the story from the Independent On Sunday. I've also seen some journos RTing a scan of the note on Twitter - odd, sad and hypocritical when the same hacks have complained about privacy intrusion by the News of the World etc.

Sunday Telegraph: GAY VOTE RIPS APART TORIES!

If only...

The Telegraph, obvs.

Obsessed, much?

PS Please note the amusing juxtaposition with the photo of Prince Charles and Camilla - a great ad for life-long heterosexual commitment through straight marriage.
Oh, and there's also an actual ad for Sandals who famously banned gay couples from staying at their resorts.
Nice one.
Cunts.

Religious News: Christian Discrimination

Sack teachers who divorce or have gay partners
Archbishop of Westminster backs call to regulate home life of staff at Catholic schools

SENIOR teachers and governors at Catholic schools face the sack if they live with a partner without getting married or if they get divorced.
A new booklet, published by the bishops of England and Wales, says that teachers working in Catholic schools should also not marry divorcees or get married in register offices or in ceremonies which do not meet with the church’s approval.
Critics say that the diktat leaves teachers “uniquely vulnerable to religious discrimination” and that it breaches European equality laws.
The guidance, which has been approved by Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster and leader of the church in England and Wales, singles out unmarried people living in “non-chaste” relationships.
It says that senior teachers in “a partnership of intimacy with another person, outside a form of marriage approved by the church...can be removed from office.”
The standards would also apply to junior teachers who aspire to promotion and to people in gay relationships, a spokesman for the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales said.
“The expectation is that [school] leaders and those who aspire to leadership positions will make substantive life choices that are in conformity with the gospel and the teaching of the Catholic church,” said a spokesman... 

The Sunday Times. 
This is so wonderfully shameless in its sheer hypocrisy it's hilarious.
You may want to compare and contrast it to this story in Friday's Telegraph;

Government 'powerless to protect teachers from sack over gay marriage'
Michael Gove fears that the Government could be powerless to stop primary school teachers being sacked for refusing to teach gay marriage, it emerged last night. 

Regular viewers may not be particularly surprised to hear the source for this silly bit of scare-mongering is... Coalition For Marriage!

Sunday Telegraph: Controversial

Sunday Telegraph.

Does anyone actually believe this twaddle?
Love thy neighbour.
And if you want to marry him, then do.
I, personally, don't give a flying fuck.
Crazed old anarchist in me emerging; Do what you want, if it does no harm - it's not up to me.
Let's move on.

Freedom To Marry: A Question Of Leadership

Marriage should available to all [sic]

We recognise that civil partnerships were an important step forward in giving legal recognition to same sex couples. But civil partnerships are not marriages, which express a particular and universally understood commitment. We feel strongly that religious freedom must be protected. This means that religious groups should be allowed to conduct same sex marriages if they choose, but equally none should be compelled to do so. The strongest legal safeguards must be put in place to guarantee this freedom.

We appreciate that some people oppose equal marriage, including many who are not homophobic but have a profound religious conviction about the nature of marriage. We believe that this debate should be conducted in a spirit of mutual respect and understanding.
Nevertheless, a substantial majority of the public, including people of faith, support equal marriage. Other countries, including Spain and Canada, have already taken this step. The Government is right to press ahead with this reform, and we urge MPs and Peers to support it.

Gavin Barwell MP
Lord Black of Brentwood
Alistair Burt MP
Ruth Davidson MSP
Jane Ellison MP
The Rt Hon The Lord Fowler PC
The Rt Hon Michael Gove MP
The Rt Hon Nick Herbert MP
Kris Hopkins MP
Margot James MP
Bernard Jenkin MP
Boris Johnson
The Rt Hon Patrick McLouglin MP
Tim Montgomerie
The Baroness Noakes
Matthew Parris
The Rt Hon Nicholas Soames MP
Paul Swaddle
The Rt Hon Desmond Swayne TD MP
Freedom to Marry
London SE1

The Sunday Telegraph. 

This is bigged up with a news story; 'Boris Johnson and Michael Gove join new Tory campaign group to push for same-sex marriage - Senior Conservatives today launch a new group which will campaign strongly for same-sex couples to be allowed to get married in church - in defiance of their party’s traditionalists.'

Note the biggest name here is one Boris Johnson.
Is it overly cynical to wonder if - like his recent call for a referendum on EU membership - this has more to do with BoJo's leadership ambitions, here by trying to outpace David Cameron by seizing the socially liberal high ground?
And was Friday's "leak" of how Cameron supports an opt-in on religious gay weddings an attempt to pre-empt the above letter?
[Note nether Dave nor Maria Miller are signatories, despite having come out in favour of its main proposal... on friday].
Do you really think Gove and Johnson (a very recent convert to marriage equality*) recently had some Damascene conversion on how unjust it was that The Gays wouldn't be able to get married in church, and felt they must speak out and start a group?
All this is pure speculation on Fagburn's part, of course, but I think that Cameron and Johnson are at war, and we are mere pawns in their game.

PS The above cartoon indicates where the Telegraph stands on all this. I wrote yesterday that it seemed odd the Tories are flexing their pro-gay-marriage credentials in the pages of the anti-gay-marriage Telegraph. I guess it makes sense for that very reason...

* Johnson said on BBC Radio 4 yesterday, that his comparison of gay marriage to letting "three men and a dog" marry was "a Socratic question"!

David Laws: On Returning

The Sunday Telegraph runs a thinly disguised love letter to "homosexual" David Laws, masquerading as an interview.
Apparently, Mr Laws is "widely tipped to return to front-bench politics in the Cabinet reshuffle expected in the autumn," replacing Vince Cable as business secretary, they're hoping.
His big idea? Slash taxes and public spending.
Which is a bit rich coming from a multi-millionaire who fiddled his parliamentary expenses, I'm sure you'll agree.
He describes inadvertently outing himself through that expenses scandal - he didn't declare that the man he'd claimed and paid £40,000 to in rent was his boyfriend - as "a very difficult thing.”
“Quite often politicians have single car crashes which are quite painful, but this was a multiple car crash – affecting many different parts of my life at once. It took a long time to recover from that."
He adds; “Michael Gove was very supportive – I am a big fan of his."
Who knew!
Oh, and he supports gay marriage - and arguably becomes the first person to put the case for marriage equality in the pages of the Telegraph unchallenged. 
The Telegraph lauds Laws as "one of a species now almost extinct – a Liberal Democrat popular with Tories"
Can it be long til David Laws does the decent thing and comes out as a Conservative?

Lady Warsi: Bigot Bit

Good news!
The latest top Tory to see their career go into meltdown is none other than our old enemy Lady Sayeeda Warsi, the Conservative Party chairman (sic).
Last week she was caught out having claimed around £12,000 expenses for staying occasionally at a friend's flat where she was not being charged any rent.
Then she was discovered to have failed to include rental income from a flat she owns in Wembley in the Lords register of interests.
And now today's Sunday Telegraph reveals that Warsi has failed to register a controlling stake in a spice manufacturing firm with the House of Lords authorities - a breach of the rule that peers must declare such business interests.
The Telegraph has also found that her business partner, Abid Hussain, accompanied her on a ministerial trip to Pakistan where he met leading politicians - exactly the claim that brought down Liam Fox and his "special friend" Adam Werritty.
To fail to register one of these may look like carelessness, to fail to register three makes her look a bit of a crook. 
How pleasing it will be to see this dreadful right-wing bigot brought down.

Marriage Equality: U-turns & Avalanches

"A survey by pollsters ComRes suggested Mr Cameron’s strong support for same-sex marriage could cost his party up to 30 seats in a general election. The UK Independence Party (Ukip) stands to benefit most from the drop in Tory support on this issue, the survey indicates, in what will be seen as further evidence that the Prime Minister is concentrating on policies that fail to appeal in his party’s heartlands."

The Sunday Telegraph.
This factoid was dropped into an interview with Boris Johnson.
Apropos of nothing, as the Telegraph had pointed out earlier in the article; "Mr Johnson, who takes on Labour’s Ken Livingstone in this week’s mayoral election in London, does not mention issues such as gay marriage and the environment – policies that Mr Cameron has promoted recently, earning him criticism from his party."
The uncitated 30-seats claim is presumably extrapolated from a highly dubious ComRes/Catholic Voices poll.
EDIT: Nope, it was taken from this ComRes/Christian Institute poll, which wasn't published til May, so the "exclusive" result was fed to the journalist. 
That put support for gay marriage at half of that of two other recent polls.
ie The claim is highly dubious and I imagine it's just been fed to the journalist by those well-known liars at Coalition 4 Marriage. 
Needless to say the Mail On Sunday is also hammering away today on the now familiar "vote loser" riff - and are also making hysterical claims they don't back up and that don't stand up that I bet they got from you-know-who.
'U-turn Tory MPs tell constituents: 'We were wrong on gay marriage' in bid to win back voters''
"David Cameron is under intense pressure to ditch his gay marriage initiative amid claims that Tory MPs fear they are 'haemorrhaging' votes over the issue...
"The pressure on Mr Cameron has been increased by warnings that a Tory rebellion in the Commons would eclipse last year's EU referendum revolt, when 81 Conservatives defied the Prime Minister. "Backbenchers are reporting an 'avalanche' of protests from Conservative supporters over the gay marriage initiative championed by Mr Cameron...
"MPs have been so stunned by the scale of the protests that a secret group has been set up by Tory MPs at Westminster to force Mr Cameron to back down. Many of the MPs admit that the 'avalanche' of letters from the Tory grass roots was forcing them to change their views."
There may have been an "avalanche" of letters about this - gay marriage must be a green light to the green ink brigade.
MPs of all parties are quite used to receiving these cranks' hatemail and probably ignore them - just as they ignore most e-petitions.
But how many MPs have actually changed their views?
Interestingly the Mail On Sunday could only find one who claimed this, Philip Lee, the newly-elected nobody for Bracknell. 
That number again - one.
The Mail make another assertion; "The Mail on Sunday has been told that Chief Whip Patrick McLoughlin has privately assured anxious Tory backbenchers that the Prime Minister's same-sex marriage plan will 'not come to a vote'.
"The MPs say Mr McLoughlin told them the controversial proposal will be 'kicked into the long grass'."
As the crisis for David Cameron continues, both within his own party and amongst an electorate with far more pressing problems, I wouldn't be surprised if the Mail On Sunday have actually got this bit right.

Catholic Church: Hate Mail

Sunday is a day when tradition dictates that all good Christians must come together and express their deep hatred of lesbians and gay men.
This Sunday two senior archbishops have asked all Catholic churches to read out a letter on why their congregation must oppose gay marriage.
You may read it here on the Catholic church's own website.
Unfortunately I refuse to use the internet as I consider it a "grotesque" break with tradition and against the natural order.
Is it even worth bothering to repeat how lines like; "The roots of the institution of marriage lie in our nature. Male and female we have been created, and written into our nature is this pattern of complementarity and fertility" sound absolutely laughable when coming from men who have vowed not to get married?
Let us pray no naughty people disrupt any masses today. 
Here endeth today's lesson in medieval bile.
Amen.

• The Sunday Telegraph has a survey today that suggests more people support same-sex marriage (45%) than oppose it (36%).
The number of "don't knows" at 19% seems unusually large for a survey. 
78% said it shouldn't be a priority before the next election, but that doesn't tell us much - beyond perhaps that most people don't really care much about this subject.
The Telegraph also doesn't say how the questions were worded, so proceed with caution, and bear in mind the Telegraph has been on an anti-marriage equality campaign of late.
I'll add these when they appear on the ICM Research website.
The ST has also published a rare pro-gay marriage piece today, titled in typical Telegraph-ese; The case for gay marriage is fundamentally conservative - it will strengthen Britain's social fabric.'
They also publish a leader asking; "Why is the Prime Minister so determined to go against the wishes of Conservative voters on the issue of gay marriage?"
In the name of balance, like.

Clause 28 2.0: LGBTory Tell Us A Story

The Pink Paper's Peter Lloyd - officially the most hilariously hopeless gay journalist in the UK - has got something of a scoop!

"The Chair of LGBTory - the Conservative Party's queer division [!!! Fagburn] - has slammed an article which suggested the coalition government was introducing a Section 28-style guideline for schools.
"As reported in The Sunday Telegraph yesterday, Education Correspondent Julie Henry wrote that there are plans to "protect children from inappropriate teaching materials and learn the nature of marriage and its importance for family life and for bringing up children..."

Ah, the chair of LGBTory, eh Peter?
Well, he would say that, wouldn't he?
What did you expect this gay Uncle Tom to say exactly?
So what did he tell you?

"It's a total non-story. Funding agreements under the last government had exactly the same wording. It's in the Education Act 2000 section 148 and the exact wording is copied into the funding agreement..."

Really?
Both the relevant clauses are quoted - in full - at the end of the Telegraph piece.
Shall we compare and contrast?

Sex and Relationship Education Guidance, July 2000

Pupils should be taught about the nature and importance of marriage for family life and bringing up children. But the Government recognises that there are strong and mutually supportive relationships outside marriage. Therefore pupils should learn the significance of marriage and stable relationships as key building blocks of community and society. Care needs to be taken to ensure that there is no stigmatisation of children based on their home circumstances.

Free School Model Funding Agreement and Academy Model Funding Agreement, July 2011

"The Academy Trust shall have regard to any guidance issued by the Secretary of State on sex and relationship education to ensure that children at the academy are protected from inappropriate teaching materials and they learn the nature of marriage and its importance for family life and for bringing up children."

The new funding agreement stops there - check it here.
So it's not "exactly the same wording", is it?
The Tories have decided not to include these all-important sentences;

"But the Government recognises that there are strong and mutually supportive relationships outside marriage. Therefore pupils should learn the significance of marriage and stable relationships as key building blocks of community and society. Care needs to be taken to ensure that there is no stigmatisation of children based on their home circumstances."

Perhaps Pink Paper and LGBTory could explain why?
One can only presume they don't think they matter?

Education: Section 28 2.0

Free Schools and Academies Must Promote Marriage

The importance of marriage is to be taught to every pupil at the Government's flagship free schools and academies.
The schools will be made to sign up to strict new rules introduced by Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, setting out what pupils must learn about sex and relationships.
Headteachers will be told that children must be "protected from inappropriate teaching materials and learn the nature of marriage and its importance for family life and for bringing up children".
But the decision to spell out an explicit endorsement of marriage in the curriculum for tens of thousands of children is highly politically significant, and likely to be welcomed by Conservative traditionalists who have been concerned at a perceived failure by David Cameron's Government to deliver on pledges to support married life.
Mr Gove has introduced the "model funding agreement" as a template for how every new free school and academy is run. Ministers want a dramatic increase in the numbers of both types of schools.
The new rules on marriage are set out in clause 28 of the funding agreement – an echo of the controversy under Margaret Thatcher's government when Clause 28 of the 1988 Local Government Bill banned schools from promoting homosexuality..."

From The Sunday Telegraph - I think this is their exclusive.
So all that stuff David Cameron told Conservative conference about supporting gay marriage was bullshit.
Someone quick write the book Michael Gove Lived With Ivan and Nicholas!
Will try and find the text of the funding agreement tomorrow to check it
but this sounds dreadful...

Update: These two quotes have since been aded to the end of the article;

Sex and Relationship Education Guidance, July 2000

Pupils should be taught about the nature and importance of marriage for family life and bringing up children. But the Government recognises that there are strong and mutually supportive relationships outside marriage. Therefore pupils should learn the significance of marriage and stable relationships as key building blocks of community and society. Care needs to be taken to ensure that there is no stigmatisation of children based on their home circumstances.

Free School Model Funding Agreement and Academy Model Funding Agreement, July 2011

"The Academy Trust shall have regard to any guidance issued by the Secretary of State on sex and relationship education to ensure that children at the academy are protected from inappropriate teaching materials and they learn the nature of marriage and its importance for family life and for bringing up children."

Can you spot the difference?

You can read the funding agreement here - many thanks to everyone who forwarded this.

Dogs: Not Just For Fashion, Bitches

"One of our centres took in a dog from a 17-year-old boy who had bought a Pomeranian because he wanted to carry it around in his bag but after a few months decided he didn't want it anymore so his mother brought it to us."

Clarissa Baldwin, The Dogs Trust in The Sunday Telegraph.
God help us if there's a war!

• 345 dogs are abandoned every day - a 10 year high - estimate The Dogs Trust.

Matthew Bourne: Ugly Duckling No More

Yesterday The Sunday Telegraph online accompanied their interview with the choreographer Matthew Bourne - of the nearly all-male Swan Lake fame - with the photo of Matthew looking quite the hipster hotty, above.
Well, the ugly duckling really has blossomed into a beautiful swan!
That has to be the make-over of the year.
Or maybe it's 'er Gaydar pic!
It's actually another Matthew Bourne entirely - the avant garde musician.
Today sadly dull normality has returned with the article accompanied with a photo of your actual Mr Bourne, right.
Or, as he's captioned now, Matthew Boune.
What is it they say about repenting in haste...

The X Factor: Paint A Vulgar Picture

Professional posh gay Philip Hensher moves from The Independent to The Telegraph today - surely the latter is his spiritual home?
He's writing about The X Factor - 'A Vast Money-Making Machine'.
This isn't a critique of capitalism of course, it's just that Mr Hensher thinks this is all so terribly vulgar.
He notes; "Each rejected act, it appears, is booked to appear at the deathlessly naff London nightclub G-A-Y the following weekend..."
Is Mr Hensher aware that "naff" is polari?
It means he thinks it's "common" - which one may presume is the real problem the likes of the arch snob Philip Hensher have with The X Factor, G-A-Y and their working-class fans.

ILGA-Europe: Je Ne Sais Quoi

"The European Commission has spent £124,000 on a five day conference for 200 homosexual, bisexual, transgender and "intersex" activists," thunders The Sunday Telegraph predictably.
It's a lot of money, but I doubt it deviates far from the financial norm for such things, so why single it out - apart from out of homophobia?
The Telegraph describes the conference matter-of-factly, but in Colonel Blimp mode.
They still use the quaint word "homosexual", and put "intersex" in baffled quotation marks.
Bless.
They're talking about the annual conference of ILGA-Europe – the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association.
Fagburn finds it hard to criticise ILGA-Europe's work, but only because I'm not sure what ILGA-Europe actually does.
Organise jollies like the above?
There's a section on their website explaining 'What We Do', but it left me none the wiser.
Anyone?

Peter Mandelson: Can You Tell What It Is Yet?

You might think that as it's Silly Season it would be pretty much open season for the newspapers to fill their pages by printing even more nonsense about "the gays" than usual.
Not today, at any rate.
There's rather a lot about that chap with clear anger-management issues who blew his head off somewhere in the North, and lots about that footyball cup final thingy which is tonight, apparently.
As for anything remotely gay, "remotely" is the word; Grace Jones wore a funny hat at something or other, Cristiano Ronaldo has painted his toenails black, an 18 year-old boy wants to have a sex change so he can look more like Jordan (bless etc etc)...
Of course there is this big bubbling-under story/speculation about what Peter Mandelson is going to reveal in his steamy memoirs, which are being serialised in The Times next week.
These could be summarised as; no-one has the foggiest idea.
Fagburn was however rather taken with the Daley cartoon pictured above, from The Sunday Telegraph.
I like the way it hints at a Blair/Brown/Mandy bizarre psychic love triangle.
But moreover, it's so fantastically badly drawn that the cartoonist has had to caption it so people will realise it's meant to be Peter Mandelson.
A bit like those kids' drawings you see stuck to fridges, where Little Darren has scrawled madly in crayon on a bit of paper - and someone has helpfully added an arrow pointing to it and the caption "dog".
Bless.