WESTMINSTER, June 3, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – This week’s vote in the UK’s House of Lords on the coalition government’s proposed gay ‘marriage’ law is “too close to call,” according to Lord Alli, a staunch supporter of the marriage redefinition bill. Meanwhile, so many Peers want to speak on the bill that the vote has been postponed until tomorrow afternoon.
Although the initial vote on legislation that is passed on to the Lords is normally only on the principle of the bill, which is then passed on to committee, opponents of the bill intend to force a formal vote on whether to reject the bill itself – a move that could see the bill defeated outright by 5:00 pm Tuesday.
Lord Geoffey Dear, who is spearheading opposition to the bill in the House of Lords, said: “This Bill was not in the Conservative manifesto, has not been subject to a Royal Commission, Green Paper or White paper or any of the normal procedures and safeguards you would expect for legislation of this significance.
“We are saying that the Government should go away and consider far more carefully than it has done the unforeseen consequences of such far-reaching social legislation.”
A spokesman for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) told LifeSiteNews.com there is a real chance the bill could be defeated tomorrow, and that Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party could suffer irreparable damage should he attempt to bring it back.
Paul Tully, General Secretary of SPUC, said that his group is still asking their supporters to contact peers to vote against the bill.
Even if tomorrow’s vote does not succeed in killing the bill, Tully said, there remains a “strong contingent” in the Lords that opposes it.
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The call for a vote “puts down a marker, challenging the government. It means that if [Lord Dear’s] vote is close, even if the government wins, it will embolden and strengthen the position of the pro-marriage Peers to put forward amendments and to seek assurances from the government on questions it has so far refused to give way on in the Commons.”
If the bill is defeated tomorrow, “it will bring into question whether the government does have electoral support, and without a mandate it will be very difficult to bring the bill back.”
Tully said that although some of the Lords will undoubtedly bring up the moral and social questions raised by the bill, the constitutional issue and the lack of a mandate from the last election will be certainly be among the most prominent in the debate.
None of the parties who campaigned in the last general election gave any hint that the legal definition of marriage was on the platform. The bill was also not included in the Queen’s Speech, which is normally taken by government as an announcement of their legislative agenda.
Cameron has pushed the bill in the face of growing rebellion from his own party, both backbenchers and some Cabinet ministers and, Tully said, he “has staked an awful lot of his personal political capital in the bill, making it a very personal matter.”
“I hope that the Lords will rise to the occasion tomorrow and come to the defence of marriage as an ancient and protective institution which the law can and should – and up to now has – protected and recognised,” Tully said. He estimated that the vote is going to be very close, but there is a “reasonable hope” it will be defeated.
Aside from the direct threat to marriage, the fact that Cameron has forced the bill forward in defiance of normal parliamentary procedures and public transparency is “profoundly disturbing,” he said
“When we see that he is concerned about parliamentary reform, then it really is profoundly disturbing. And because of what we are tending to see that reformers will come along with ideas they want to put forward that will sweep aside the checks and balances that have been in place for more than a thousand years.”
The government, he said, has shown no respect “for the fact that marriage was an institution which parliament didn’t create”.
Government, Tully said, “adopted and decided in past centuries it would lend support to marriage. But now it’s presuming to turn it into something else. Which shows no sense of respect for the historic role of the law and parliament.”