Legalisation of gay marriage is a good thing and so I'm really pleased to see that the Govt is considering a change in the law and the idea has the support of top ministers.
Not only is it fair, equitable, and humane but it is morally the right thing to do. It's not for Govt to tell people who they should or shouldn't fall in love with or who they should or shouldn't spend their whole lives with and they shouldn't be discriminated against because some people find homosexuality offensive.
I know a gay couple in the US who got married - and later divorced just like any other couple. And why shouldn't they? We do live in the 21st Century and divorce is no longer illegal.
Perhaps I'm cynical in thinking that Govt isn't acting just out of the good of it's heart but because backing gay marriage is a popular policy.
Polls have shown that two-thirds of the public would support gay marriage.
according to the Daily Mail.
Funny that, really, because the Anthony Worral Thompson Petition to review the smoking ban has consistently been ahead of the e-petition to make gay marriage legal and yet not one whisper from Govt on their plans for smokers other than forcing us to go
Cameron is right to ignore homophobic fears from those who don't like gay people because of who they are, or how they live their lives. I'm confused, however, because if all this is really about "equality" then why is Cameron pandering to smokerphobics who feel the same about smokers as homophobics do about gays?
Homophobics are scared of gay people. They think they will catch something if they just stand next to them, or they will somehow make "normal" people gay just by the very contact between them. My mother blamed my sister's first girlfriend for my sister being gay, for example, but my sister was just gay. (Quite a courageous thing to be in the macho engineering city of Lincoln back in the early 60s, incidentally. However, you need a certain amount of courage these days to come out as a smoker and defend you right to continue to smoke.)
Smokerphobics are scared of smokers. Anti-smoker propaganda has resulted in violence against smokers. Abuse against smokers is justified on the unproven grounds that they harm others in the same way that those who hated and feared in previous generations once promoted gay people, Jews and other "undesirables".
Smokerphobicsthink they will catch something from smokers, they fear that non-smokers, especially children, will become smokers just by the very contact or sight of a smoker. They feel sure that the very whiff of a smoker means they will die of something horrible too young.
The difference between Homophobics and Smokerphobics is that one group has been prevented from spreading its bile in favour of the admirable quest for an equal, tolerant, free, and compassionate society. The other is encouraged to be as abusive as possible against a purposefully demonised group officially deemed fair game for any bigot.
Govt and it's social engineers want to eradicate tobacco in the future as a recreational product even though they are happy to Frankenstein it as a pharmaceutical product to exploit its healing qualities and sterilise its stimulant factor.
They have even created enough social backing to destroy the centuries-old legal tobacco companies in favour of the relatively new Big Pharmas which evolved from the snake oil trade. To finish Big Tobacco off they must attack it's last remaining consumers.
It is with glee that they thieve a family-founded, historical company's trade mark in a bid to turn it's consumers towards their clients and funders. It reminds me of when they used to write "Juden" on the walls of Jewish businesses to stop customers going inside.
"They" are these sort of people who fill Govts full of Smokerphobic nonsense. They create panic and a false sense of alarm and popularity for policies they are happy to brag are in their own self interest rather than based on real public support or need.
If smokers wrote reports, carried out similar studies with vastly different conclusions, and had the same direct associations with Tobacco companies, or charities dependent directly or indirectly on Big Tobacco, as these so called independent "experts" have with Big Pharma, they would be brandished as evil monsters just out to get more people smoking. These people below want us to believe that they are altruistic to push us towards their products. No doubt they've convinced themselves that this is acceptable because they hate smoking and they've persuaded Govts to hate it too.
R.W. undertakes research and consultancy for, and has received travel funds and hospitality from, companies that develop and manufacture smoking cessation medications. He has a share in a patent for a novel nicotine delivery device. He is a trustee of the stop-smoking charity, QUIT. His salary and that of much of his research team is funded by Cancer Research UK. He is co-director of the NHS Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training funded by the UK Department of Health. M.R. has, in the last 5 years, had conference expenses reimbursed, been paid an honorarium for a talk and received freelance fees from Pfizer, but has not accepted support from the manufacturers of stop smoking medications in the last 3 years. L.B. is scientific adviser on tobacco control to the UK Department of Health and Vice-chair of Cancer Research UK's Tobacco Advisory Group. P.H. undertakes research and consultancy for companies that manufacture stop smoking medications. J.S. acted formerly as adviser to the manufacturers of smoking cessation medications, for which he received remunerations and hospitality. M.J. undertakes consultancy for Pfizer.
The Govt is blinkered in listening blindly to these people without giving due balance on a two sided issue. In backing the anti-smoker industry, and it's promotion of Smokerphobia encouraged by the stigmatisation, denormalisation, marginalisation and exclusion of smokers, it is crossing the line of established civil liberty rights on property ownership and the right of free association, into dangerously oppressive territory.
The gay community has come a long way in 50 years in its fight for equality, respect and tolerance. Legalising gay marriage is social progression in the right direction. Today smokers are the unpopular minority but the same persecutors who hate them, because of what they do and refuse to quit, share the same kind of mind of those who made laws against homosexuality.
The treatment of smokers is social regression based on intolerance, inequality, and dodgy manipulation of science and the law. It is taking society and the values it holds dear backwards in the wrong direction.
If we are equal, then we are equal, no ifs, buts, or propaganda. The Govt should wake up to the fact that equality is not selective.