Let's get wed!

This morning, shambling back through the park after a Saturday morning run, sweating chablis, we wandered past the park’s popular wedding reception venue and, being nosy buggers, nebbed through the windows to see if it was set for a do.  The bright March sunlight reflected back from snow-white tablecloths and made pleasingly large wine glasses twinkle.  The colour scheme, it would appear, was purple. 
This caused some debate with references to pensioners, Jenny Joseph and Bridget Jones.  Who, we wondered, had a marriage with a whiff of lavender?  One of our party snapped their fingers and announced ‘Gays.  It’s the village’s first gay wedding’.
Parking possibly offensive sexual stereotyping, discussion moved straight to universal surprise that gay marriage should finally become a reality under a conservative government, and not only a tory government, but under a prime minister so Maggiesque that some suspect him of being whipped up in a lab, cultured from a greasy bit of Thatcher’s handbag.
The introduction of gay marriage was, of course, David Cameron’s big idea to de-toxify the image of the Conservative party, and I am sure that Dave is pleased as punch that this has happened in the same week that the very same Conservative party have banned toddlers sending their parents home-made birthday cards if mum or dad are in prison, a move so despicable that it led the Taliban to issue a rare press release, simply stating ‘steady on’, possibly.
Gay marriage is very welcome, but of course is also a safe policy to introduce, as if you answer to the question ‘should people be discriminated against simply because of their sexual orientation?’ ‘yes’ then that puts you on the same spectrum as people who don’t think girls should be educated, an UKIP.
The news was full of midnight weddings, including one glorious clip of a couple of chaps who had just got hitched, with one confessing he couldn’t remember it clearly as it was all a ‘blur’.  Every single husband in the world listening to that clip interpreted the moment of silence that followed that statement as the bloke’s new husband thinking ‘wait ‘till I get you home!’.  Welcome to married life chaps.
Of course, there are those who are not in favour of gay marriage, such as that UKIP buffoon who claimed that the Prime Minister’s plans to introduce gay marriage caused the floods.  I understand that UKIP are climate change deniers but this was taking things to a whole new level and, if one wanted to enter the whole gay marriage/meteorological effect debate, one might remark that 29 March 2014 sees England in glorious sunshine and, even if it had rained, chances are there would have been a rainbow somewhere, which would have been appropriate too.
Of course, what drove the tories might have been the realisation that marriage is good for the economy.  By that, I don’t mean that the institution of marriage leads to the sort of stability that economists like, but that it costs a fucking fortune to get hitched.  From the rings to the bummymoon, the gay marriage boom will be a welcome shot in the arse for business from jewellers to travel agents and, from the look of it this morning, manufacturers of purple food dye.
Apparently there are a few religious types who aren’t very keen on gay marriage, considering that the proper place for a same-sex relationship is between a catholic priest and choirboy.  Luckily, as I heard somebody say in sentence that killed any further debate stone dead, marriage is a function of the state, not of the church.  Anyone about to argue differently suddenly had anyone who got hitched in a registry office quietly cough behind them, and that was that.  I strongly suspect that, ironically, anyone suggesting that a couple who were not married in church are not married in the eyes of god would feel some spectacular Old Testament wrath, or at the very least, some Church of England indifference.  At the end of the day, it probably only matters if you are married in the eyes of the people you love, who have your John Lewis gift-list.  Oh, and probably the tax man too.  And Ikea.

Looking down

There's a job vacancy at Lambeth Palace as the Funny Hat Wearer In Chief of Agnostics Anonymous has announced that after ten years of people being bitchy about his vestments behind his back, he is stepping down, no doubt to write a series of essays that essentially boil down to; 'I was right, sod the lot of you'. Applicants for this post are a short list of bishops from around the country but, like fishermen, surely the appointment panel (chaired by who, God?) should cast their nets wider. This appears to be a job where the most important role is telling people how to live their lives and commenting on the more pernicious aspects of Government policy, so surely the most ideal candidates are stand-up comedians and bloody bloody tabloid columnists.

These are two professions never short of an opinion, usually uninformed and always unaccountable, ideal credentials for leading a religious organisation, as nobody knows whether your pronouncements about the afterlife are right until it's too late.

The issue exercising the church and the tabloids at the moment is gay marriage. It's amazing that anyone would think that somebody should be deprived of the pleasure of marriage just because they happen to be a ulist. Certainly, it can't be an exclusively heterosexual skill set to continue living with somebody while compiling a never ending list of petty resentments.

It starts with a list, evolves into a book, then at some point becomes the big book of petty resentments. I know couples who can make a whole tragic mime from taking down the Big Book of Petty Resentments from the shelf, opening it up as one would a substantial tome and making an entry. I even know one couple who, when Mrs Big Book calmly announced that their Big Book of Petty Resentments had grown so substantial that they had moved it to a Kindle edition, Mr Big Book responded that he had had to outsource his resentment management to a call centre in Bangalore.

Looking down on the city, with a God's eye view, one thing becomes clear, problems on a human scale like just who can get married to whom fade into insignificance. If two chaps want to get married, then who is going to object. Certainly no married chap, who thinks two things, the first being that he doesn't see what all the fuss is about and the second being that if he has to spend Sunday mornings pretending to care about wallpaper patterns and wandering round garden centres, he doesn't seed why anyone else should get away with it just because they are confirmed batchalors, fans of musical theatre and recipients of the occasional cock.

It's important to get perspective on this, and also to see what others are saying. If your views on gay marriage align with those of people who also have robust views about women priests, women voting, women working at all and, indeed, women leaving the house, then you probably need to either realign your views in a hurry or sod off to Afghanistan to live in a cave with lots of other gritty misogynists who quickly find out that without the civilising presence of women, you develop questionable hygiene, your socks rot and you end up having the sort of relationship with one of the other fellows that, ironically, results in your wanting him to make an honest man of you.

There's no doubt that being an Archbishop should have its perks, chief among these being that everybody listens to you. The problem is that being the Archbishop of Canterbury means that everybody listened to you only long enough to work out what it is you are saying so that they can start arguing with you. Ending every day by slamming the office door shut, uncorking the alter wine and muttering 'I bet the Pope doesn't have to put up with this shit' is not conducive to developing the spirit of forgiveness.

Wearing a big hat and living in a palace though, those are some perks, possibly even more fun that telling people how to think and daydreaming about punching Richard Dawkins, really hard. First to do that - gets the job.