My uneasiness about this is more practical than philosophical.

Despite the relatively high divorce rate these days, one thing you really do notice being in a heterosexual marriage is the degree of commitment involved and how difficult it is to break that commitment (which from society’s point of view is how it should be). Part of this is due to culture and family etc, also it is to do with one’s children, and the horrendous financial implications of divorce.

I have seen numerous gay friends and acquantainces enter civil partnerships, and one thing which sticks out for me is how much less seriously they are taken. They are seen less as a life commitment and more as a commitment to one’s partner at a particular time, with no stigma and little difficulty involved in breaking up that commitment whenever one partner feels like doing so.

Making civil partnerships into fully legal gay marriages will, in my view, spread this more selfish and consumerist approach inevitably into heterosexual marriages and lead to further increases in the divorce rate, which will be disasterous for children and family breakdown. It would be interesting to see whether IDS takes the same view (I suspect he does).

Riaz did very well indeed in Bradford East back in 2010 and he was only c2000 votes away from gaining the seat from third place. If there is a by-election then he would be the perfect candidate for the Conservatives.

In the 1997 landslide they got away with it and Singh then had 4 years to build up a personal vote. But in a by-election they would be less likely to get away with it-particularly if the tories choose a Muslim candidate as they surely would.

Indeed, I can think of few better Tory canidates than Mohammed Riaz, who did so well in singh’s first contest

If not allowing gays to get married were discriminatory then fair enough, you could have the argument. But it isn’t. Its just a chattering classes issue isn’t it. Its one of those dog whistle policies for the liberal elite that run our government, our institutions and our state media. But it is completely any utterly out of touch with the ordinary voter in the country.

I just don’t understand why the people and the party are being railroaded in this direction that we don’t want to go. It was the same over Section 28 and reduction in the age of consent: polls showed massive opposition from the ordinary people and so the Blair government just did it all without referring to them at all.

I don’t want to come accross as rabidly anti-anybody. But perhaps a little more emphasis on politics that affects EVERYBODY and not just these little liberal elitist issues to please the Guardian readers, and we’d all be much happier.

Labour would probably select a muslim candidate, and see an increase in its vote share on top of the national swing due to this.

By the way Shaun, I saw your comments on ConHome yesterday about Cameron’s proposals to fully legalise gay marriage.

Although perhaps not so excised by the issue as you are, I have to admit I also feel pretty uneasy about it.

Having failed to come close to picking the seat up following an unusually good Tory result in 1997, I suspect we would also be frustrated by any by-election here.