better to marry than burn with passion

Columnist

Thursday 26 July 2012

The SNP Government has been taking those brave pills again.

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Tom Shields on …

Like in August 2009 when it released Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, from prison because he was dying from cancer. The move was not popular in many quarters, mainly the US. Criticism continued as Megrahi did not have the good grace to die quickly.

The latest brave decision is to legalise same-sex marriage. For reasons I do not comprehend, this is controversial. I thought such issues had been put to bed, so to speak, in the last century when our society stopped sending people to prison for same-sex intimate activity.I am also confused about the difference between a civil partnership, which already exist, and a same-sex marriage. Your average civil partnership looks much like a marriage to me. As in, they can be quite uncivil at times. The bickering, recrimination, and discord that characterises many a union. I witnessed a civil partnership almost dissolve in Ikea over the choice of a bookcase. Civil partnerships are also about making a home together and doing all the for-richer-or-poorer, in-sickness-and-health stuff. We're all Jock Tamson's spouses.The issue about where a civil partnership gets called a same-sex marriage seems to involve religion. There's a surprise.The Scottish Catholic hierarchy are against it. They say: "The church does not see same-sex marriage as an appropriate and helpful response to same-sex attraction." St Paul's advice in Corinthians (the chapter of the Bible, not the Glasgow club) is: "If they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion." This obviously does not include gay people or, indeed, priests.Philip Tartaglia, the newly appointed Archbishop of Glasgow, has taken the debate into dark and difficult territory. In an interview he suggested the death of Labour MP David Cairns at the age of 44 from acute pancreatitis might have been due to his being gay.Archbishop-elect Tartaglia is allowed his personal opinions. My opinion is that same-sex marriage is entirely the business of the two people involved.I do have a problem with the civil partnership party I have been invited to. Do I dance first with Jim or Bill? Or both at the same time. Or follow my usual practice and don't dance at all.

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better to marry than burn with passion

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