While I mostly agree with you the debates we saw yesterday and the day before clearly showed the need to bring for bills to secure legality for humanist weddings and to allow access to civil partnerships for heterosexuals if they can't be completed as part of this bill its only right that we address them separately. I mean many of the oponents of the bill raised the concern of the non equal access to civil unions i feel its only right that we address these concerns.

As for the hatred charge I just don't believe that the majority aren't in part motivated by a revulsion hatred or dislike of gay people and gay rights. That being said we shouldn't accuse them of such without evidence I can't help that I don't believe "protecting marriage" to be their real motivation but as you say people get the benefit of the doubt. I think are politics is sadly past the point were one side ever really believes the other is being sincere.

Now the really important thing is we live up to the safeguards as you said we fought for equality and that mean standing up for the rights of the religious to govern their own lives just as much as standing up for gay people to do so.

Sometimes I wonder if we have as many definitions of conservative as there are conservatives. Self identification is always the best way attempts at idealogical purity purges never end well.

In my mind UKIP's future will come down to the results of the next general election, I think the best possible (likely) outcome for them currently is that they secure seats sufficient to act as the king maker in a coalition. Hopefully from the conservatives point of view this would be with the conservative party where they would act as a push for them on the EU and immigration ect. Now its also possible that they fail to win any or sufficient seats and the conservatives gain a majority. In this case I don't see them having much future impact as if the leadership believe they can win without the voters they lost to UKIP why would they change they arn't to great at the listening game. Finally there's the really rather bad scenario, they fail to win seats and labour gain a majority no one gets a Europe referendum and both UKIP and the conservatives will blame each other and further cement a divide. There are obviously other more outlandish possibilities but I genuinely believe the best hope for UKIP to get some of their policies through is in a coalition with the conservative party.

I think the real question is what right do we have to stop consensual people entering into such an arrangement. The state needs reasons to take peoples right to do things away and they should make darn sure there good ones, people should be laying out cases as to why we should restrict/ban polygamous/polyandrous relationships rather than saying but that the way it is and relying on societies entrenchment in tradition to make a case for them. Rules are worth reviewing for time to time.

Now personally I think the is a potential case for restricting polygamy/polyandry based on the tendency for abuse that these relationships appear to have. I however haven't been exposed to many or well any outside of a news story where its all gone wrong. I can't see a reason why a group couldn't make it work in a none abusive and consensual way though so I may well not have a large enough sample to make a judgement on this.

I used to have a positive score here till I spoke up for civil rights.

I would argue the problem lies with the state imposing a meaning of marriage at all. If the state going to be in the business of recognising personal relationships then whatever way it does this in should be open to all. A much more sensible solution would be to remove the legal significance of the word marriage in the states eyes. I would have it that as far as the state is concerned everyone has civil partnerships and can call their own relationship whatever they feel like. Gay people want to call themselves married they can, people want to say the same two gay people aren't really married because marriage is only between a man and women fine law doesn't care.

Wear it like a badge of honour. :)

If we back out now it will turn the stupid decision to get involved in this mess into a disaster. It should have been left to labour to sort next time they were in office. The party already looks (and frankly is) very weak were not winning any votes now by supporting gay marriage but I personally believe that if one considers the demographics of this issue in the long term it is wise to try to get it out the way now we have started. We can not out social conservative UKIP, they will always look more attractive on that front nor should we because we are by no means united as a party behind social conservative values. Social issues are just something that we are going to have to be a big tent on. I believe gay marriage is a losing issue long term I appreciated many in my party don't and frankly care about it allot more than I do. I want to see a sensible centre right party that focuses on the economic interests of the British people, I don't want to have to defend social conservative policy to my fellow students every time we talk about politics. Do not make the mistake of thinking that only gay people care about this stuff, we are facing a youth that is highly socially liberal, secular and more motivated to vote on these issues that ever before. I talk weekly to people who I can bring round and convince of the merits of fiscal conservatism but I keep running into the wall of "I could never support a party that doesn't treat gay people equally". (again I know many of you believe equality doesn't include marriage but the youth thinks it does) So what do I do? Honestly I don't know if the conservative party is long for this world as it stands, a case could be made for turning into a more libertarian party I guess or even we go 3 ways and have the uk political right made up of 3 parties one for the libertarians one for the socials and one for well I guess id call them the financial lobbyists if I was being polite. Sadly while this would certainly make us all feel nicer and be able to be more ideologically coherent its unlikely to win any seats in a first past the post system.

Edit: Sorry if that came across a bit Ranty i'm just a bit down about this whole mess.

We should get behind this now we cannot afford to be the party against equal rights and that is how people will remember us if we vote this down. Even the most staunchly socially conservative of us must see the way the winds are blowing this is going to happen and by us taking up the reigns we can do more to protect religious freedom than if we vote it down and it ends up happening in a labour/lib government. 85% of young people (below 25) are in favour of marriage equality we have lost the fight over the idea and the correct course is now to protect as best we can those that may be impacted by the change.

Language is a mutable if enough people understand the meaning of a word to be one thing it does start to mean that. We write the dictionaries. Surely you wouldn't take the position that the meanings of words have remained immutable for all time? People do refer to couples with civil partnerships as married you don't accept that definition and that's fine but your going to have to accept that when other people say two humans are married they may in fact mean that those people have a civil partnership. The distinction just isn't important to a large section of the population.