Gay marriage and 'liberal bigotry'?

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I was watching Question Time on iPlayer and saw Peter Hitchens (Daily Mail hack) accuse the Tory party leadership and wider British society of 'liberal bigotry' for forcing the gay marriage issue through parliament. He said that the issue of gay marriage is a small one compared to many others facing the UK (and I guess this could be extended to other nations); he said that it is only being pushed as a way to bully those with conservative Christian values. He said David Cameron doesn't really care about it, he was just hates the conservative wing of his own party and wants votes from 'Guardian readers' (he does know that Guardian readers never vote Tory, right?)

Now, I'm unsure if David Cameron cares about this issue for its own sake or not, but I certainly do (as do other social liberals). The fact that it angers social conservatives is an unintended side effect of supporting what I think is right and fair. So there's one part of his argument gone. Just because he can't understand why someone would care more about gay marriage than they do about some of the things he cares about (like tougher prison sentencing), doesn't mean people don't care about it. It's not an either-or thing, anyway - either you care about the EU (like he does), or you care about gay marriage.

There were a few religious members of the audience who argued that the European Court of Human Rights would never let the proposed legal exemptions for religious institutions stand, and that the churches will be forced to marry gay people. How much weight does this argument have? I'm guessing not much, but I'll see what others have to say. The religious audience members also argued that this is a slippery slope and that we'll eventually be forced to let close relatives get married - because obviously us social liberals will need a new stick to whack the conservatives with.

Peter Hitchens finished with and argument that in the future, people with conservative Christian values in the UK will end up being persecuted. Do you think this will happen? I think the people he is accusing of 'liberal bigotry' are simply wanting to curtail the rights of others to act in a bigoted way. I will not stop people who want to believe that gays are abominations who should not wed, as long as they don't actually try to treat gays badly or stop them from getting married.

tldr version - Is 'liberal bigotry' real? If so, is this what the gay marriage debate is really about?

Maybe.

I call it the "Big Orange Knob".

Back in the day, if we wanted to finish a prototype project and start another, we would mount a big orange knob on the front of the device just before passing it off to the suits downstairs. They would be so focused on how ugly the knob was, that they would ignore some of the other features that we thought were important, and they would approve the product for production provided we removed the big orange knob.

Thus, we are able to get a few innovative ideas past their over-paid egos while they commended themselves on yet again thwarting our lack of fashion sense.

It seems that these "Gay Rights" bills are smokescreens to distract the politicians from bills of lesser emotional content, but that are still important enough to them get them passed anyway.

Here's an example of what they're afraid of from here in the US:

@Fnord: That's an interesting way of putting it. That's probably similar to the current strategy of the Tory party. It's more about distracting the electorate than it is about alienating a section of it.

As for social liberals in general - I will say this, since I am one - I have as much disdain for conservative ideas as they have for mine. It's not bigotry to simply disagree with someone. I do think that other liberals are too quick to jump up with accusations of homophobia, though.
Even if someone is homophobic, you don't persuade them by calling them that - because these social conservatives are phobic, they're not hateful. They're scared of the way society is changing. Their identity is knitted into a theology that they couldn't do away with without causing a personal crisis. When I see conservative religious people from modern societies, I wonder how much their heart is really in it, and how much of it is just a psychic defence mechanism.

Hitches has his own political and Christian agenda! I'll talk more about that later. Cameron is using this issue to try to please the middle ground of votes, the center of his party plus the Lib Dems. As a social liberal myself I was quite surprised that the Tories of all parties would think about gay marriage!

Now Hitches is an former Trotskyist, and ex member of both Labour and the Tories parties. Currently he classes himself as a "Burkean conservative" an euphemism for being a liberal conservative IMHO. Also he was an atheist now a member of the Church of England, who beliefs that both the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer are a "poetic translation" of the word of God.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-19211869

^ So, the 'liberal bigot' he takes issue with is a memory of his former self projected on all current social liberals?

^ yes

He was a Trotskyist while studying politics around the late 60s to the mid 70s. Two years ago he called Trotskyism a "poison of cruel revolutionary rubbish". Then joined Labour then left them in the 80s due to working for the Daily Express. He was a Tory between 1997 to 2003, he ran against Michael Portillo in a byelection in which he called him a "liberal".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/1999 ... iticalnews

The liberal bigots are often worse than the conservative ones. But they deny they are bigots, and are convinced that only conservatives can be intolerant.

The day that Roman Catholic priests are legally compelled to celebrate a marriage in which one of the parties has a divorced spouse still living, then I will agree that the religious fear has some substance worthy of discussion.

It is patently obvious that clergy are free to refuse to marry people who do not qualify for the sacrament of marriage within the particular religious tradition concerned. If this is the best argument that religious objectors can come up with, then I see no merit in their claims.

^ good point and thinking about it the Church of England will have as say over this when it get to the House of Lords.
26 Church of England bishops sit in our upper house!

Anyway officially the Church of England are against same sex marriage.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20680924