Regular readers will be aware that Liberal Democrat Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone is currently carrying out a consultation on the issue of allowing civil marriage for same sex couples in England. Last week Party President Tim Farron urged party members to respond positively to the Consultation, saying:
We have always stood for individual liberty and the right to choose how we lead our lives. This is why I am member of our party and why I am so proud to be your President. It’s why we came into being in the 19th century to protect the rights of religious minorities. It’s why we led the support for equality for women and why we decided before any other major party that civil marriage should be open to same-sex couples equally.
The Liberal Democrats in Government are now delivering on that. There’s an ongoing consultation on how best to deliver equal civil marriage, which will lead to new legislation in this Parliament. The Government consultation asks about the best way to implement equal civil marriage, and our party conference agreed that the best way to do that is in the context of full equality of marriage and civil partnerships.
The Coalition for Equal Marriage has now released a video which is clearly designed to melt hearts – and I know I’m a big softie, but it certainly worked with me.
You may well be sitting at your desk, overwhelmed by midweek blues. I guarantee this will make you smile. Enjoy.
The consultation closes on 14th June. You can respond here. The Scottish Government ran a similar consultation last December which attracted not far off 50,000 responses, over 23,000 via the Equality Network. By rights, then, it would not be unreasonable to aim for Lynne’s consultation to have quarter of a million positive responses in favour of equal marriage.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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10 Comments
Don’t forget LGBT+ Lib Dems have produced a Guide to the Consultation and have flyers that you can order to promote the campaign in your local area!
Great cause, done the consultation but must say as an ex serviceman don’t like the video….
Not the idea or the content, more the fact that one of the servicemen had a faint Goatee beard which would just not happen !!!
I suspect this video will turn more people against gay marriage than for it. The way many people watch videos is by imagining themselves as one of the characters in it. Film makers and advertisers have encouraged us to learn this trick. With a man/woman relation, it’s easy for straight people to choose. But this habit of choice can produce issues when straight people watch a man/man video like this one. Of course it’s may be the same the other way round, but if more people are straight than gay, then more people may take the opposite message than was perhaps intended.
Richard: I have literally no idea what you’re talking about!
Ok, Andy, sorry for falling into the trap of compressed incomprehensibility …I’ll try to explain …
Caron Lindsay describes the video as “clearly designed to melt hearts”, and “I know I’m a big softie, but it certainly worked with me”. Perhaps she saw the joy of the first reunion – the man/woman one – and transferred this emotion to the second reunion – the man/man one. In psychological terms she may have “identified” with one of the characters – perhaps one of the women.
But there are other ways of catching emotions in the film, and one of them is less persuasive.
It happens that I have several times arrived back from somewhere and been disappointed by not being met by a loved one. This appears to be what is happening to the second solider at 0.22 in the film, so at that point I began identifying with that soldier. I was encouraged in this by the rather short amount of time the film-maker spent on the first one. After that point, I was imagining myself in the second soldier’s situation, seeing through his eyes and experiencing what I imagined he was experiencing.
Unfortunately for the film-maker, I am a straight person, perhaps even stuffy. I don’t mind gay people doing their thing, but I don’t want to do it myself! However,by being conned into identifying with the second soldier, I end up doing just that at the end of the film. At 0.30 I am interpreting his partner as a brother or close friend, and at 0,46 I am beginning to wonder what is going on. At 1.05 I am a straight man kissing another man and not enjoying it one little bit!
So my emotional response is different. I experienced what some people might describe as an emotional rape – nothing like the awfulness of a physical one of course. I don’t think the way I was caught by the film was particularly unusual – other people will have similar reactions. Hence my conclusion that some people will come away with a negative enotional response to gay marriage.
My conclusion is re-inforced by reviewing the film, which is looks more like psychological warfare the more you viewit. Look at the child at the right at 0.02 – the child’s head is not visible agains the black, dress and the visual suggestion is actually of a pregnant woman striking her bulge – baiscally a sex or motherhood cue. Look at the crotch shot at 0.10 – another sex cue – and the joy on the womens’ faces at 0.15 – all about sex (and all soldiers know that these reunions end up with sex!)! These cues are all ways of catching people’s emotions and getting them to “identify” with characters in the film, just like they do in ads.
Sorry to have been long-winded. Does this help explain my claim is that, unlike Caron, the film had the opposite effect on me? I’m not a particularly unusual straight man, so maybe it won’t work for many other straight men too. And if more people react like me than like Caron, then the film will fail to achieve its aim – and may even achieve the exact opposite!.
He’s never been near any armed forces, wearing a beret like that! 🙂
“I experienced what some people might describe as an emotional rape”
Do you not think you may be putting it just a bit too strongly there?
@Richard Dean don’t you think you might be over thinking this and possibly coming across as dare I say it slightly prejudiced.
@Smon. I was asked to think. I disagree on slightly – I’d say not at all. Indeed, I would argue that the idea that I have to participate in the experiences of gay people, rather than simply not mind what they do together, is a prejudice that all people should fight against. I suspect I am also rather common, in several senses including having views that are shared by many others. The issue of gay marriage is about freedoms and rights. It is not fundamentally about the emotions that the film tries to catch people with, like the ones felt by Caron orthe different ones experienced by me. It is also not about loyalty to Britain (cue the flag at the start of the film) or about soldiering. Freedoms and rights comes with responsibilities, and I suspect that makers of this film need to introspect a little more about what their film is actually about, and what their responsibilities to a viewing public might be. The distributors might also like to consider whether the film might actual do damage to the missing message of rights, which message I am happy with.
@Chris. Come off it! Firstly, films are all about putting forward messages more strongly than in normal life, so I’m just adopting the existing vernacular. Secondly, no, the rest of the sentence explained the emphasis.