Thursday 27 September 2012

Ed Miliband Issues Strongest Support For Marriage Equality Yet

Oh, Dear Constant Reader, how far we've come from the days of the last Labour leadership election. If you remember I stalked the internet accosting unwary Labour leadership candidates with questions about marriage equality.

Ed Miliband, perhaps understandably, seemed most unprepared of the five candidates for these questions. His answers, such as to my question here or to Liberal Conspiracy here, were hesitant.

2. Would you allow gays to be legally married, rather than just be registered as a civil partnership? 
He hesitates. “I will listen to what people have to say on going further than that if there is a demand. No one has yet put that to me in the leadership election.” He said his feeling was that not enough people were asking for the policy. 
But he quickly got the feel for it and, realising it was an issue that was just going to keep coming up, he soon declared his support for it (such as in this tweet to me).

He has now both confirmed that he supports full marriage equality (i.e. including allowing religious ceremonies) and suggesting that Labour MPs will be whipped at the vote on marriage equality.

With the Lib Dems and Labour offering strong support and the Tories split on the issue, marriage equality feels like it is getting closer. Credit where credit is due; good job Ed!
 
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Cameron also talked at the 2010 party conferance about supporting gay marriage not despite being a tory but because he's a tory and he seems to be running scared. Therefore I take what these people say with a pinch of salt until it happens :o)

@jamesreckons