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Whatever It Means, It Means Something

Closing his first conference as leader, Mr Cameron said the Tories had to be “on the side of the next generation” if they wanted to return to power. While society would be better off if marriage rates went up, and he promised to support marriage through the tax system, the party had to accept the […]

Closing his first conference as leader, Mr Cameron said the Tories had to be “on the side of the next generation” if they wanted to return to power.

While society would be better off if marriage rates went up, and he promised to support marriage through the tax system, the party had to accept the similar commitment of civil partnerships between homosexuals.

“It means something whether you’re a man and a woman, woman and a woman or a man or another man,” he told Conservative activists in Bournemouth. ~The Daily Telegraph

Well, when you put it that way…I don’t really know what Cameron is saying.  “It means something,” he says.  But what does it mean?  That might be an interesting place to start.  One can imagine a similar disquisition on religion: “It means something, whether you’re a mendicant friar, an Athonite monk, a Hindu priest or a jihadi.”  Now if you want to say that it has become politically necessary to cave on this point, as on so many other things, you should say that if that is what you think.  But right here Cameron talks about what these relationships mean–they all mean “something”–and so reduces them all to the same level and the same importance.  If the Tories need to be on “the side of the next generation,” it might not hurt to have sufficient numbers of the “next generation” on whose side you can be.  Part of that comes from bolstering heterosexual, child-bearing marriages and, yes, discouraging all other kinds of legal “unions.” 

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