Leader: The right of choice

Published on Sunday 18 December 2011 02:11

AS  WE reveal today, Alex Salmond appears to be seeking a compromise deal on his party’s plans to introduce gay marriage in Scotland.

In response to bitter opposition from the biggest faith groups in the country, led by Cardinal Keith O’Brien of the Catholic church, the First Minister’s instinct seems to be to ditch his original intention of legislating so that there is equality in the eyes of the law between all people who want to marry, regardless of their gender or sexuality.

If these negotiations do, indeed, result in a policy fudge that legalises gay marriage but prohibits it taking place within a faith setting, Salmond can expect a barrage of accusations. The SNP leader will claim he is only listening to what people are saying and responding to their concerns (but only listening to some people, it seems, as more than a dozen minority faiths from liberal Jews to Unitarians are keen that a distinction between civil offices and their places of worship is not drawn).

The suspicion will be that Salmond is planning a U-turn because he feared the potential electoral consequences of going ahead with his original intention. The switch of the Catholic vote away from Labour towards the Nationalists has been one of the key political shifts in recent years, going some way to explain the scale of the SNP’s landslide victory in May. Similarly, the opposition to gay marriage from Scotland’s Muslims threatens the SNP’s dominance of that community, especially in key seats like Nicola Sturgeon’s constituency of Glasgow Southside.

This, however, cannot be an issue where a party’s position is decided by psephological calculation. On this issue, there is a right and a wrong. And the SNP is in danger of damaging its reputation by siding with the wrong side of the argument.

The Catholic church is against gay marriage. It is also worried that if these proposals do come in as originally mooted then it could face a legal challenge if a same-sex couple ask to be married in a Catholic church and the church exercises its right under the legislation to refuse. The church is concerned the couple could claim they are being discriminated against on grounds of sexuality, and if they win their Human Rights court case then the church could be forced into a course of action it is fundamentally opposed to. That concern is understandable.

The problem with the SNP compromise of restricting same-sex marriage to civil offices and not religious places is threefold.

The first is that it will not satisfy the Catholic church because they are opposed to the principle. Also it will not rule out any subsequent court action that the church might fear. The second is that the other faiths who do have a wish to see same-sex marriages in their places of worship, or at least retain the option to have them, are right in that it would unfairly impact on them and could force them into a course of action they fundamentally oppose.

But the single biggest reason for not pursuing this compromise is that it strikes at the very heart of what the new legislation is proposing to do. With clear and admirable purpose it is seeking to make people equal before the law regardless of sexual orientation. Any clause which says marriage is open to some people in certain places but not open to others because of their sexual orientation has clearly failed to do what it set out to do.

Salmond should stick with his original plan, it is hard to see any justification for not doing so.