The news is that the Equality Network (a group that works for equality and human rights in Scotland) commissioned Ipsos-MORI to survey Scottish attitudes towards marriage and found that of 1,003 people asked, 64 percent supported the idea of allowing gay and straight couples an equal right to marry.
Hey, that’s quite good news.
Ah but not everybody thinks it is … can you possibly guess who has raised an objection? Yes of course, some clueless Catholic has. Mr Kearney, who apparently speaks for the Catholic church in Scotland, has told the BBC’s Sunday Politics Scotland programme the poll was “deeply flawed”.
“The public in general are very wary and unlikely to suggest a person shouldn’t have a right.
“When you begin your question by saying should someone have the right to same-sex marriage you automatically have distorted the result.
What a load of bollocks, the core of this issue is all about rights, that is not in any way a distortion.
Polling agency Ipsos-MORI issued a statement this afternoon following Mr Kearney’s comments:
“We understand that this is an issue of heated debate in Scotland and across the UK and are aware of the coverage that our poll received on Sunday.
“The wording of the poll question was designed to ask the public about rights since, for same-sex marriage to be treated equally it would need to be enshrined as a right. The Equality Network is therefore interested in finding out whether same-sex couples should have the right to marry.
“Alternative wording would not have done that and we therefore do not accept that the survey is distorted in any way.
“We are confident that respondents will have understood the question and what is meant by a right. The question itself was balanced, allowing respondents to tell us whether they ‘agreed or disagreed.’
“The findings from the poll are also largely in line with much other survey evidence. For example, a poll we conducted across Britain in 2007 found that 68% agreed with the statement that ‘gay couples should be allowed to get married’ and the most recent Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, from 2010, found that 61% of adults in Scotland agreed that ‘gay and lesbian couples should have the right to marry one another if they want to.’”
If the Catholics do not want gay people to be members of their little delusional belief club, fine, its their club, they can believe whatever they like. However, outside in the real world, it is quite frankly none of their damn business, so as far as I’m concerned they can bugger off because they do not get the right to inflict their nutty medieval superstitious ideas upon the rest of us.
What this does of course reveal is that they are so morally bankrupt that they are vigorously pushing for a section of the population to be denied basic human rights that the rest of us take for granted, but then given their track record on morality I guess this is not such a huge surprise.
It is going to happen, Tom French, from the Equality Network and Equal Marriage Campaign, has said …
.. around the world increasing majorities of the public were saying that they supported same-sex marriage.
It’s supported in [The Scottish] parliament as well, last week we announced that a majority of MSPs have signed our equal marriage pledge saying that they will vote for this. So we’re saying to the Scottish government – listen to the public, listen to the parliament and you’ve got the green light to go ahead with legislation.
Such legislation would not force religious organisations to conduct same-sex marriages if they opposed it.