Legislation for gay marriage is approved in the UK House of Commons!

[Gooders1002]

and then I will be able to have a husband

[KichigaiNeko]

Congrats UK!


Now if ONLY Australia can get it's act together.

[Zen Badger]

Now watch all the theist idiots crying about how it will destroy the sanctity of marriage etc,etc.....

[zebo-the-fat]

Now watch all the theist idiots crying about how it will destroy the sanctity of marriage etc,etc.....

I keep hearing that argument, I don't understand how it affects MY marriage (registry office, no god botherers involved) if the two guys down the road get married. It's their life to live not mine, it should help the problem of one half of a gay couple who have lived together for years being left homeless when their partner dies and the relatives take the house and property. This seems to happen quite a lot.

[DeistPaladin]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21346220

Yay! Now it just has to pass through the House of Lords and we'll be one step closer to equality.

Congratulations to the UK for your enlightenment. They say the nut doesn't fall far from the tree so hopefully your offspring across the pond will soon follow.

Can someone from Britain explain the House of Commons/House of Lords branches of Parliament to me? Feel free to PM me to avoid topic drift on this thread. Just curious. Thanks.

[Dee Dee Ramone]

I just read New Sealand's parliament is also making progression in this matter. This was published by the huffingtonpost in august 2012. In the upcoming months further votes will be casted. Welcome Oceania!

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — New Zealand lawmakers on Wednesday overwhelmingly cast a first vote in favor of a gay marriage bill that was given impetus by President Barack Obama's public support of the issue.

The 80 to 40 vote in front of a packed and cheering public gallery was the first of three votes Parliament must hold before the bill can become law, a process that typically takes several months and allows the public to weigh in. Only a simple majority was needed to ensure a second vote, and the margin is a strong indication that the bill will be passed.

Should New Zealand pass the measure into law, it would become the 12th country since 2001 to recognize same-sex marriage. Some states in the U.S. also recognize such marriages, but the federal government does not.

Polls indicate about two-thirds of New Zealanders support gay marriage. It also has the support of most of the country's political leaders.

[paulpablo]

On the islamic forum i go to this was the opinion on gay marriage, this isnt taken out of context because its just a thread of this same topic but on a muslim forum the comments taken from top to bottom

Its about some muslim MPs who voted in favour of gay marriage, the thread poster put the word muslim like this "muslim" i guess to show he doesnt really believe they are muslims
These are the following comments

Shame on them, and all those who voted for them.

One cannot be described as a Muslim who supports gay marriage. Gay/homosexuality is not an alternative to heterosexual marriage.

It is as if one supports robbery, murder, theft, fraud. Then again, these are all part of British foreign policy.

The act, by essence, is cursed. This goes against Fitrah, so it should be banned even for non-Muslims.

The biggest warmongers Britain, France and the USA under the heaviest jewish influence are pushing Gay marrriage.

[Tiberius]

Can someone from Britain explain the House of Commons/House of Lords branches of Parliament to me? Feel free to PM me to avoid topic drift on this thread. Just curious. Thanks.

The House of Commons is the elected part of government. It is made up of 650 Members of Parliament who are elected every 5 years in a general election (or in a by-election if one dies/resigns) by the unfair First-Past-The-Post method. The party which wins a majority in these elections gets to form a cabinet, with the party leader usually in the position of Prime Minister. In the 2010 election, no party got a majority, so the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats formed a coalition government, with the Conservative leader as Prime Minister, and the Liberal Democrat leader as Deputy Prime Minister (and other cabinet positions divided amongst both parties).

The House of Commons debates and votes on legislation, presided over by the Speaker, who is an elected MP but who has sworn to be non-partisan and has to resign from his/her party before taking the position. The current Speaker was elected as a Conservative.

The House of Lords is the vastly undemocratic and unsecular branch of government, formed of an unfixed number of Lords who are appointed by leaders of parties and also the Queen. 26 of the Lords are the "Lords Spiritual", who are bishops and archbishops of the Church of England (hence...unsecular). Most Lords are appointed for life, or until they resign. The House of Lords also has the power to veto some of the bills passed by the House of Commons (but, the House of Commons can also sometimes overrule the veto). There are a number of bills that for various reasons, the House of Lords cannot vote on, but they are still influential in decided a lot of law.

So there you have it, we have a parliament made up of unfairly elected MPs, who in turn appoint a number of unelected and sometimes more powerful Lords, who in turn can veto a lot of bills passed by the House of Commons, but are also limited in their power. The Lords also contains 26 bishops of the Church of England, disregarding people of other religions (who have to be appointed to get in). Oh, and the entire parliament serves an unelected monarch who in her spare time likes to have tea with dictators.

[LastPoet]

Monarchs Tibs, Monarchs.

Around here, at the time, we killed them. Now they must be democraticly voted in, not for some inbred bloodline.

[DeistPaladin]

British democracy evolved over a long time. I guess that's evolution for you. It doesn't always produce optimum results nor does it get rid of vestigial and outdated aspects of its former self.

Trust me when I say Intelligent (or not-so-intelligent) Design doesn't always produce great results either. Ours is the polar opposite of a government that evolves or ever changes at all. We wrote a Constitution which is a document we revere as if it had been written by God and the founders were angels. It's an American thing. Anyway, that means we still have our outdated Electoral College which makes sense when communication is by horse-riding messenger but not so much in the modern age. Thanks to this outdated relic, we got W in office despite his losing the popular vote in 2000.