Here we have a Prime Minister who wishes to encourage, applaud and recommend domestic arrangements between couples of the same sex. Why not? Such arrangements have been common practice and in good standing for several decades.

One might share  Cameron’s somewhat tardy enthusiasm for this cause – except for one thing. He calls what he is proposing an extension of the state known as Marriage. Oh dear!

Marriage has for hundreds of years provided the cornerstone of family life and community cohesion in Britain. But for hundreds of years it has been essentially heterosexual, and that is how it is going to stay. It is not going to shuffle sideways and make room for a philosophy which, although perfectly respectable, is so fundamentally different from its own. Reach for your Book of Common Prayer and you will find that the Church of England has for several hundred years designated marriage as being an arrangement between “man” and “woman.” The same qualification applies throughout christendom

Any prime minister who believes he can change the meaning of words is wrong, and the fact that Cameron should even think of meddling with a word as important as Marriage shows what an extraordinary creature he is.

Is it not like suggesting to a golf club that, because its principle interest is a ball game, it should make its facilities (and a warm welcome) available to all the rugby players of its neighbourhood?  Is “daft” too strong a word for such a proposition?

All Cameron needed to do was to give the object of his enthusiasm a designation. Various  terms describe what he is describing.  “Same-sex partnership” is one that is commonly used. Homogamy is a little-known word which describes exactly what he has in mind. I have no doubt that the secretariat at 10 Downing Street could come up with alternatives.  Let our prime minister select the best of them, and use that label to identify and acclaim those whom he wishes to applaud.  But he must keep his hands off Marriage, because, I repeat, Marriage and Homogamy, although both may be equally lovely, are fundamentally different.

I am an admirer of both. But it worries me to discover that among those obtuse enough to consider imposing a merger of the two under a single umbrella is the prime minister of this once-great nation.

[The reader might consider checking out GENERAL 1: Democracy, which, although written long ago, is not unrelated to the above.]