More than half of the Tories opposed it, apparently.

so government bill is passed by the support of the opposition as the main party of the coalition government MPs dont really want it.

It just shows how out of touch some MP's are with public opinion. Most opinion polls I've seen show the majority of the public in favour of gay marriage.

Pretty much... yeah.

It will not stop them being kicked out next time. The fact that they did not support this will not mean that people will vote against them for this, you would have to be a bigot for that. The majority of the population want this or have so little animosity towards it that it does not matter.

I don't know, there was some impressive frothing at the mouth in the Daily Mail's comments section!

Well, captive audience, fed an agenda every day... I'm not surprised.

And many could be described as bigots.

to be fair I know some real die hard labour party supporters who are frothing at the mouth just as must as the daily mail reader. Its not just some on the "right" that have problems with this.

There is apparently a bias against this if you are older. Younger people are in favour of it by quite a wide margin. In the overall scheme of things would you vote against your party if they supported this? If how meaningless are all the other problems in society to you? I am not aiming this at you bobb, but as a generalisation of all voters.

My MP voted against the bill.

True but it's the right that's making all the noise about it.

I'm somewhat sceptical about surveys saying the vast majority are for or against it. I personally suspect the large majority don't give a flying rats ass, but if they're asked 'are you opposed to equal rights in marriage for gay people' they instinctively think the answer to that should be 'no'. And a pollster with an agenda in mind puts that down as 'in favour'.

Every poll I've seen that asks 'what government policies are important to you' equal marriage rights don't even feature.

Apathy does not equal ascent but in a case like this I think there has to be a strong case not to do it. Which there isn't.

It does not feature in my personal list of what is important. It makes sense to have one simple marriage rather than differing ones with differing rights. While it is not something that I would do I do not see that depriving someone else of that right is fair. So I am in favour.

I agree with that, although I see no reason for any particular church to agree with it. Not that they're relevant to the debate, since this vote is a matter of state rather than religion.

"Therefore what God, who doth damn all sodomites to hell, has joined together, let man not separate"