Caroline Dinenage wrote to constitutents voicing her opposition to equal marriage
David Cameron’s cabinet reshuffle continues today, with the appointment of Caroline Dinenage to the post of minister for equalities. Dinenage retained her Gosport seat in the election, and is part of Cameron’s new drive to increase the number of women at the Cabinet table.
But a look at Dinenage’s voting record raises questions about her suitability for the job.
In 2013 she voted against the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill at its Second Reading in the House of Commons. She voted for other components of the bill in order to stay loyal to the Tory party line, and was absent for the Bill’s Third Reading.
But there is no ambiguity in Dinenage’s comments on the issue. Responding to a letter from a PinkNews reader the day before the reading, she wrote:
“As you may know, as the established Church, its own Canon Law is part of the law of the land and one of its canons states that marriage is in its nature a union of “one man and one woman”.
I therefore believe that the institution of marriage is distinctive and the State has no right to redefine its meaning – these proposals were not included in any of the three main manifestoes nor did it feature in the Coalition’s Programme for Government.
“As I have mentioned, under current law same-sex couples can have a civil partnership but not a civil marriage and I believe that there is no legitimate reason to change this. Preventing same-sex couples from being allowed to ‘marry’ takes nothing away from their relationship.”
She also told a local newspaper:
‘I’m concerned that in the future teachers may be forced to teach civil partnership and gay marriage whether it’s in their religious belief to do so or not.”
Further back, in 2011, Dinenage was listed by the Daily Mail as one of 118 Tory MPs who had written to constituents stating their opposition to proposals to allow gay marriage. The Mail reported at the time:
“The sheer scale of the opposition means Mr Cameron is facing what has become the biggest Tory rebellion in recent history.”
The list included Cameron’s former equalities minister Nicky Morgan, who also voted against gay marriage.
Is there something the PM isn’t quite getting?
Ruby Stockham is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow her on Twitter
107 Responses to “‘No legitimate reason’ for same-sex marriage: meet the new equalities minister”
Storbritannien_Dansker
Then go for it! Best wishes for you and your…girlfriend? Partner? Special Friend? Just don’t forget that you will pay a far higher tax since you would not be married, okay? I would also recommend a Healthcare Proxy. That’s just some free legal advice from a lawyer. And women were just chattel until the 20th Century CE. Keep up those traditions! For you, hmmm…two goats and a pig?
Mike Stallard
“I don’t like black people but some of my best friends are black so I am not a racist.”
Do you buy that?
Now read your own very aggressive article and ask yourself about phobias (why are you so worked up?) and also how you would feel if I accused you of “beastiality, orgies, divorces, and paedophilia”.
Selohesra
Don’t get me wrong – I am all for equality in law – that was point of my initial post. As far as I am aware there is no longer a difference between tax (income or IHT) between marriage and civil partnership. If I’m wrong and there is a difference I would be in favour of harmonizing the tax rules – I just don’t see a need to hijack the institution of marriage to achieve that.
Sophia Marsden
It’s completely disingenuous to claim that opposition to same-sex “marriage” is opposition to equal rights. Humans rights extend to everyone equally. Everyone has the right to marry and form a family with someone of the opposite sex. It is impossible to biologically form a family with someone of the same sex, you can buy children, artifically create children using someone else’s genetic material and even womb, get children assigned to you from other people (who may or may not actually still want those children) – but you can never have your own. It’s simply a fundamentally different thing, a fundamentally different type of family than the kind of family that most heterosexual couples can take for granted as the fruit of their union.
I think the muslims have this one right in the sense that they don’t allow adoption, only transfer of guardianship. An adopted child should be loved and treated well, but it’s not the same thing as a biological child. Parents who have both have real struggles treating both equally because we have an inbuilt genetic imperative to protect our biological offspring over and above our (also inbuilt) imperative to protect children in general. To pretend unequal things (artificially created families, either through surrogacy, adoption, artificial insemination – where all or some of the “parents” are not related to the children and natural families created through sexual intercourse) are the same is not “equality” it’s lying at best but more often delusion.
Sophia Marsden
But even before that point there never any notion of a “homosexual marriage” because homosexual couplings do not produce offspring. Before any church existed there were traditions surrounding the practice of young people setting up home with a person of the opposite sex, even in cultures that celebrated or tolerated sexual behaviour between people of the same sex, because that setting up of home is the starting of a new generation of people. That’s why it concerns everyone and not just the two people involved – because they’re going to be creating new people soon.