I have been moved to make a small contribution to the debate. It is important, in responding to the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh), to put on record that there are many religious people who do not recognise the caricature that he has put before the House today. They understand that the House is deliberating on what will become law if the Bill passes through another place, and that, at other points in its history, Members have had to make similar difficult determinations about what should become law. Once this measure becomes law, there will be an obligation on public servants such as registrars, and certainly on teachers, to understand this matter and to teach it as the law. We should therefore draw a distinction between the promotion or endorsement of a personal view and what is the law.
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I say gently that Members will recognise that not that long ago, in deliberating on matters of race, this House made changes to its position and sought to end the discrimination of minority people, many of whom had arrived in this country in the Windrush generation. My father was one of those people, and he certainly recollected a period in his lifetime when it was commonplace for those applying for a job or housing or meeting certain public officials to encounter either the attitude or the sign of “No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs”. We moved to say that that behaviour was not right. It remained racist and people had strong views on it, but legally we arrived at a position where this House declared that it was wrong.
In a sense, what we are doing here is declaring that the sort of prejudice that stops gay men and women marrying is wrong. If we arrive at a place in the coming months where we decide that that sort of prejudice is illegal, it cannot be right for any teacher to be entitled to have a separate view and to propagate such a view to children.