Gay marriage is the enlightened elite yet again sticking two fingers up to the rest of us

There’s a brilliant post by Brendan O’Neill in Telegraph blogs today, in which he sums up why – besides the cavalier overturning of the definition of marriage the world has been comfortable with for centuries – many conservatives and right-wingers are so irritated by the whole nonsense of gay marriage. Simply put, socially “progressive” legislation should be fought for by a sizable cross-section of the population over a period of time, and then, depending on how the rest of us react, either introduced or rejected by Parliament. Going from nought to 100 miles an hour in no time flat is the sign of a good sports car – and a lousy government.

As O’Neill puts it (read his post here):

In essence, gay marriage has redefined “social progress” to mean imposing an elite block on tyrannical public passions, to mean having the right-minded rulers of society keep in check the wrongheadedness of society’s inhabitants. This echoes the social engineering disguised as social progress that was promoted by Fabian types in the early 20th century far more than it does the true social progress pursued by the Suffragettes or Rosa Parks. It is not social progress at all, really – it is social demarcation, a way for the great and the good to distinguish themselves from the thick and the old.

Speaking as a thick, old person, I couldn’t agree more.

Three of the main arguments adduced in favour of allowing homosexual couples to marry are that nobody under 30 sees a problem with it; that marriage is a good thing, so the more of it the merrier; and that if governments of the past hadn’t over-ridden the wishes of traditionalists, homosexuality and abortion would still be illegal.

What never seems to be questioned is whether the vast majority of people under 30 give a damn about the issue. Being asked a question to which you shrug and mutter “Yeah, whatever,” doesn’t mean you actively support whatever is being proposed: it probably means you haven’t given the issue a moment’s thought and, as you can’t see how it’s going to affect you personally and as you don’t want to sound, y’know, mean, you might as well grunt assent.  “Young people” being cool with something is not, I suggest, the best reason for introducing new laws with which a sizable portion of the older population have made it clear they’re not at all cool. If you counted the people for whom this issue genuinely matters, I suspect committed refuseniks would outnumber enthusiasts by roughly ten to one.

As for the second argument, if David Cameron thinks marriage is so good for society, why hasn’t he chosen to demonstrate his enthusiasm for the institution by changing the tax laws in favour of married couples? And if marriage is so good for society, why is he so all-fired determined to undermine the basic concept by excising the importance of having and rearing children? And banning churches and mosques from consucting same-sex marriages won't make it acceptable - it merely underlines the fact that these aren't really marriages at all, and that all that's going on here is liberal posturing based on semantics.

As for legalising homosexuality and abortion, both changes were introduced after many years of public debate and a huge amount of pressure being exerted for and against (remember all those jokes about hoping the government wouldn’t make homosexuality compulsory?) – both sides of the debate cared enormously about these changes, and the traditionalists were defeated. They did not come about because the Labour Home Secretary Roy Jenkins woke up one morning in 1967 and thought, hey, I know, why not show how enlightened I am, garner a few more votes at the next election, annoy the stupid troglodytes in my own party and get some great write-ups in the Guardian by decriminalising same-sex sex? Now, I just need a fag packet so I can draft some legislation and change the law before anyone has a chance to discuss it in any depth or identify wrinkles.

The only possible reason for allowing homosexuals to marry would be that a large and vocal section of society was militating for the change. If it has been, I haven’t noticed. Brendan O’Neill highlights this lack of any concerted action on the part of campaigners to overthrow the  traditional concept of marriage with which the vast majority of us are evidently perfectly happy:

It is remarkable how lacking in mass action the gay marriage campaign has been. There have been no public demonstrations at all: no gatherings in Hyde Park, no marches on parliament, no handcuffing to railings. The push for gay marriage has taken place entirely at the level of respectable society, being spearheaded by tiny handfuls of sharp-suited gay lobbyists, lawyers, celebrities, commentators and the Notting Hill/Hampstead sections of the political class.

In his superb book The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy (available here),  the great American thinker Thomas Sowell revealed how the anointed – i.e. members of the smug, liberal, urban, politico-media-academic elite to whom we are a constant source of disappointment – feel they have the right, based on their natural intellectual and moral superiority, to race ahead with progressive legislation without bothering to consult the rest of us. As long as it reinfirces their already cosmic sense of suprtiority, the peasants can go hang. That’s why the deeply undemocratic EU gets away with murder and why our right to free speech has been destroyed by “hate crime” legislation and why we’re living with the unalloyed delights of mass immigration and multiculturalism.

Forget John Major - David Cameron is beginning to make Ted Heath look like an adept politician.