UK Parliament / Open data

Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Hon. Members are calling out numbers to me—600 in England and 2,500 in Scotland. Why something is so easy in Scotland and so difficult in England is beyond me to imagine.

One point that the hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) made quite strongly concerned democracy. Democracy is not dictatorship of the majority. Our kind of democracy accepts freedoms for minorities as well. The humanists are a substantial and significant minority, of whom I am proud to be one. Over the past decade, between the past two censuses, there has been a substantial increase in those professing no religion, and a significant proportion of those people have become humanists. If a number of those professing no faith understood that there was an alternative way of living according to some strong ethical beliefs, they could become humanists themselves. They would only need to find out more about humanism, and they might well become humanists and want a humanist marriage.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
563 c1088 
Session
2013-14
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
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