LONDON, May 8, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Homosexualist activists say they are disappointed today after the Cameron government’s proposed “gay marriage” plans were not included in this morning’s Queen’s Speech in Parliament. Meanwhile, Conservative Party loyalists are saying the party’s “gay marriage” push, along with the Liberal Democrats’ plan to “reform” the House of Lords to make it an elected body, have cost both parties dearly in last week’s local elections.
Observers are speculating that the results of the nation-wide local elections, which vote in representatives in county and municipal councils, have prompted a frantic rewriting of the government’s policies in time for this morning’s Queen’s Speech, the event that announces the government’s upcoming goals. While “gay marriage” was not mentioned in the Speech, Lords Reform is still officially on the table.
However, the fate of the plan to redefine marriage remains unclear, with conflicting information emerging. Chancellor George Osborne said the “reform” plans are being shelved in favor of “the things that really matter” to voters, namely the economy. But on Monday Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone, a Liberal Democrat, assured nervous homosexualists there will be “no U-turn,” saying it will be brought in as promised by 2015.
“In the aftermath of a tough set of election results for both Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, I couldn’t help but notice a few naysayers popping up in the media and uttering dire warnings about a government that needs to concentrate on core issues rather than same sex civil marriage,” she said.
““For goodness sake – it’s not either / or. The economy is clearly the No 1 priority – but the Coalition can multi-task!”
A spokesman for the Home Office said that “gay marriage” is a government commitment, but said the public consultation was not yet complete. “We are absolutely committed to introducing same-sex civil marriage and have been clear that we will make any legislative changes by the end of this Parliament.
“There was never any plan to include equal civil marriage in this year’s Queen’s Speech. Our consultation is still ongoing and it’s important we listen to people’s views.”
Marriage defenders, however, have pointed out that this is the first time the government has used the consultation to create wiggle room on the issue. A major bone of contention has been that the consultation itself never asked the public whether “gay marriage” was wanted, but only how it should be implemented.
Gerald Howarth, the Conservative defence minister, was among the many in the Conservative Party who laid the blame for the local election disaster directly at the feet of the “gay marriage” plan that he said was a “distraction” that has alienated the party’s traditional base.
“A lot of Conservatives have written to me saying ‘I am a lifelong Conservative, there is no mandate for this, why is this being proceeded with?’” he said.
In the lead-up to the elections, senior Conservative Party members and MPs repeatedly tried to warn Prime Minister David Cameron that his “modernisation” policies in general, especially “gay marriage,” which have moved the party further to the left, are alienating the rank and file of the party, both among voters and MPs. Last week, with the party losing hundreds of seats in councils across the country, Cameron told his remaining supporters that he has heard the message voters were sending “loud and clear”.
In a piece in the Daily Telegraph, Cameron wrote, “The message people are sending is this: focus on what matters, deliver what you promise – and prove yourself in the process. I get it.”
Both the country’s ruling coalition partners, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, took a pounding in the elections. Across the country, the Conservatives lost a total of 405 seats in 12 councils a mere 24 months since the nation ousted the then most-hated Labour Party.
Experts have said that with the Tories not even holding an overall governing majority, a replication of these kinds of results in a general election (the next one is set for 2015) would consign them to political oblivion.
Despite Cameron’s assurances, some long-time Conservative Party loyalists remain skeptical, saying they do not trust either Cameron’s motives or his political savvy.
Gerald Warner, a journalist and former senior policy advisor to the party, told LifeSiteNews.com, “When, on election night, a serving government minister openly tells his party leaders that their support for same-sex marriage and vandalising of the House of Lords has provoked disaster at the polls, deference has been ousted by fear.”
Tory MPs, many of them sitting on tiny majorities, know that last week’s results could presage an electoral bloodbath for the party in the general elections “and are terrified,” Warner said.
Warner also warned that the absence of a “gay marriage” bill in the Queen’s Speech does not mean the matter has been dropped.
“Signals are being sent out that both the homosexual ‘marriage’ and Lords ‘reform’ proposals are being diluted with weasel words about ‘looking at’ or ‘considering,’ rather than legislating. We shall see.”
Warner called Nigel Farage’s United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) “the instrument of voters’ vengeance.” The rump libertarian party has expanded dramatically since the coalition government took charge in 2010, from simply promoting British withdrawal from the European Union to championing all the views of traditional Toryism.
“This is fatal for the ‘modernised’ Tory Party,” Warner said.
“In the past, when traditionalist Tories jibbed at liberal policies, the party’s grandees would sneer dismissively: ‘They have nowhere else to go’. Well, they have now; and every election that goes past – general, local, European – as Tories migrate to UKIP their former tribal loyalty to the Conservative Party is broken.”
Warner said that the next 24 months are the “Tories’ last chance.”
Unless they abandon modish but useless wind turbines, posturing pro-homosexual policies aimed at pleasing 1.8 per cent of the population while alienating many times that number, destruction of the House of Lords at the behest of a Liberal Democrat Party with no remaining vestige of a mandate, they will become extinct in 2015.”
As of yesterday, the petition to retain the traditional definition of marriage promoted by the Coalition for Marriage has gained more than half a million signatures. A counter-petition by homosexual campaigners had 53,000, a number that broadly reflects the demographic electoral balance according to polls.