Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Lord Birt Excerpts

Tuesday 4th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Birt]

My Lords, my upbringing was in the intense, enclosed environment of post-war Liverpool Catholicism. Until I went to university and until I was first exposed to the tentative calls for the decriminalisation of homosexuality, I had not the slightest idea what it was. I knew that Oscar Wilde had been imprisoned, but for what exactly was a mystery.

I was not alone. In the 1960s, on the first television programme that I ever produced, I worked with Kenny Everett—a supremely talented iconoclast, who was the programme’s main presenter. Kenny was only two weeks younger than me. He had lived on Merseyside but a mile away, although I had not known him, and he went to another Catholic school just down the road from mine.

In his teens, Kenny appreciated that he was different. He would tell me that he had experienced stirrings in the presence of handsome young men, but these feelings were unfathomable to him. It was not until later when he worked in London in his early 20s, and not until after he had indeed married, that he came finally to understand and slowly to embrace his true nature—the one with which he had been born. In the decades that followed I worked in broadcasting with many other people who were gay but who would not admit it. I recall vividly that in the 1980s a close and esteemed colleague came with tears in his eyes to tell me both that he was gay and that he was about to die of AIDS, which, tragically, he shortly did.

Even in the 1990s, friends and colleagues who were clearly gay were unwilling to acknowledge it, especially in public. Yet social and cultural attitudes have changed rapidly. One of the most profound and progressive changes I have witnessed in my lifetime is how many men and women are now unabashed about their homosexuality, and feel free to present their partners with pride and confidence. Openly gay couples are now commonplace in almost every section of society and almost every walk of life.

The introduction of civil partnerships was a vital step, allowing gay couples to enjoy the legal privileges afforded to heterosexual marriage. This Bill goes the whole hog and rightly allows gay couples who wish to do so to match opposite-sex couples, and make the powerful public statement of love and commitment that marriage proclaims.

On the question that so basically divides the two sides in this debate, I feel not a scintilla of hesitation or doubt. If gay couples want that option—that unequivocal equality with heterosexual partnerships—then they should have it. Of course same-sex marriage will not eliminate prejudice or discrimination, but it will certainly hasten the day when homosexuality is accepted as a wholly natural state.

Two parts of the Bill cause me sadness. Along with everybody else who has spoken, I accept the need for religious freedom. I accept it and I respect it. I recall the persecution of Catholics in this country. However, I do not have to admire the fruits of that freedom. The perspective of the other side of the argument is that the Bill entrenches and legitimises the discrimination that still exists in the established churches. The notion that a gay in a civil partnership may only be a bishop in the Anglican Church if he is celibate, for instance, I find both astonishing and repugnant. Yet over the past two days we have heard that there is already some diversity of opinion within the established church on the matter of gay marriage. I do not expect to see it in my lifetime, but the day will come when age-old discrimination within the churches against both women and gays—born of ancient attitudes, in different societies and in older times—will simply wither away. The inherent values of tolerance and respect, reflected in Christ’s essential teaching, will one day prevail.

My second sadness is that the Bill narrowly missed an opportunity to follow Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland and allow the growing ethical but non-religious movement to which I proudly belong, the Humanists, to conduct legal marriage ceremonies. That is a regret and a missed opportunity. However, I recognise that this brave Bill brings us one historic step closer to a better world, and I wholeheartedly support it.