When marriage was "redefined" (sic)

And he shall prick that annual blister,

Marriage with deceased wife's sister.

Have you heard about the time when civilisation collapsed because the restrictions on who could marry whom were relaxed? When marriage was "redefined"?

No, neither have I.

It was the social issue that raged throughout the Victorian era - could a widower marry his sister-in-law?

It had been restricted under the old Marriage Acts but then was fully outlawed under the 1835 Act. But almost immediately a movement sprang up to remove the restriction and allow widowers to marry their sisters-in-law. The reasons why they might wished to do so could vary considerably - at one end of society high levels of maternal mortality meant that in many working class households unmarried woman found themselves taking on the maternal role from their deceased sister. At the other end it was common for families without male-line heirs to pass property through marriage and if the first daughter died young then remarrying her widower to another daughter would preserve the arrangements and keep the property within her family.

(Julian Fellowes, if you're reading this, please do not use this as a plot for a future series of Downton Abbey.)

The debate lasted many years with the first bill to change the law being presented in Parliament in 1842. Thereafter the issue came back almost every year, sparking the above verse in Iolanthe. In part the opposition stemmed from the view that marriage isn't just the union of two individuals but of their families as well. But it also stemmed heavily from religious interpretations, with many arguing it was wrong to go against the traditional Church list of forbidden unions.

Sound familiar?

Many widowers found themselves in this position, but perhaps the grandest was Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse, the widower of Princess Alice, daughter of Queen Victoria. After his wife's death in 1878, there was hope of his marrying her younger sister Princess Beatrice. This led to the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII) making a rare Royal intervention in the House of Lords when he gave support to the reform but it still failed to pass. The head of the Church of England described the opponents as "those bigots".

There were many further attempts that were blocked despite clear majorities in favour in the Commons, although the Lords was a stonier prospect. One such attempt fell in 1902 due to a filibuster by the "Hughligans", a ginger group of young Conservative MPs centred around Lord Hugh Cecil and including Winston Churchill. Notably at the time they were all bachelors.

Eventually the law was reformed by the passage of the Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Marriage Act in 1907, although the equivalent provision for widows to marry their brothers-in-law wasn't passed until 1921. The Act was straightforward in allowing the marriages, but also made provision to allow individual clergy to decline to perform such marriages themselves (and enable them to allow another clergyman in the same diocese to perform them in their own church or chapel).

Does anyone now find the idea of a widower being able to marry his sister-in-law objectionable? Who actually argues about this issue at all? Has the institution of marriage suffered because of this change?

And this is hardly the only reform whereby marriage is defined differently by religion and civil law. Divorcees cannot get married in some churches and only with special dispensation in others, yet the law did not stop Camilla marrying Charles in a registry office.

Let's hope the next reform of the marriage laws doesn't take another sixty-five years.

Female Prime Ministers

Early today a sudden change occurred in Australia. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was facing a collapse in support within his own Labor Party so called a leadership election. But the power brokers within Labor turned against him and by the time it came for the vote his support was so weak he opted to not even stand. And so Australia now has a new Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.

(Rudd will no doubt be upset at being dumped by his party so early. In fact only one previous Australian Prime Minister has suffered a comparable fate. But that was Robert Menzies who bounced back to retake the leadership of his party and went on to be Australia's longest ever Prime Minister. The second longest, John Howard, also had an earlier period of leadership, albeit in opposition. So will Rudd return?)

But for now the moment is with Gillard. Around the world many Australians are proudly pointing out that they now have their first female Prime Minister.

Around the world many New Zealanders are loudly pointing out that they had their first one thirteen years ago. (Remember Jenny Shipley?)

And here in the UK we had ours thirty-one years ago, but some left-wing feminists are keen to downplay that, as though they want airbrush Margaret Thatcher out of the history books. Perhaps it's because she doesn't conform to the socialist-feminist perspective on what a female leader should be like. Perhaps it's because she, like so many women, was not concerned with implementing the more radical feminist agenda and called the bluff of those who claim all women have the same outlook. Maybe some feminists just don't like women who conform to their viewpoint - frankly a highly sexist attitude.

(The UK was actually beaten by an interesting mix of countries including Sri Lanka with Sirimavo Bandaranaike in 1960, India with Indira Gandhi in 1966, Israel with Golda Meir in 1969 and the Central African Republic with Elisabeth Domitien in 1975.)

But whilst the UK may have achieved this back in 1979 it's hard to pretend that since then women have been at the forefront of politics. Looking just at the leadership elections of the big three, since 1979 there have been sixteen different people on the ballot papers for the Conservative Party leadership, of whom Thatcher (in both 1989 & 1990) is the only woman. Labour have had nineteen different candidates, of whom Margaret Beckett (in 1994) and Diane Abbott (in 2010) are the only women. The Liberal Democrats (including predecessor parties) have had thirteen candidates including just one woman, Jackie Ballard (in 1999). There have been various other candidates who have launched bids for the leadership but abandoned them before appearing on the ballot paper - Stephen Dorrell, Don Foster, Alan Duncan, Malcolm Rifkind and John McDonell all spring to mind but no women.

I find it hard to believe that a male to female ratio of 11 to 1 remotely reflects the ratio of political talent in this country, no matter how many people may proclaim the absence of any formal barriers. There are a mixture of problems including time commitments, the fact that politics puts off disproportionately more women than men, and some attitudes. When women rise high in politics and fail they are often denounced as over promoted because of their gender. The same comments aren't made about failed men.

(Sure there are some women who have been over promoted because of this. I think it is perfectly valid to criticise Harriet Harman as over promoted because of her gender when even she made it her central pitch for the Labour deputy leadership, so it's hard to deny that she has got where she is because she is a woman. Theresa May has also danced around the edges of this - remember how when she was appointed Conservative Party chair her gender was stressed heavily? But the likes of Caroline Spelman and Yvette Cooper have not ridden the waves. If and when they fail big time it will be no different if they had been men.)

There isn't an obvious solution. Requiring X number of candidates/MPs/Cabinet members to be women risks over promoting mediocrities whose failure will merely set back the prospects of a level playing field. And the aim must be a level playing field not statistical exactitude. Helping talented women acquire the necessary skills and experience that they might not otherwise obtain so they can come forward and overcome the entry barriers is a much better way. Hopefully when David Cameron retires in a decade or so there will be women who come forward as candidates not as a mere token but as strong competitive contenders on equal terms.

Put your own house in order first Gordon!

Gordon Brown has attacked the ban on same-sex marriage recently passed in California. (BBC News: Brown attacks US gay marriage ban & PinkNews: Exclusive: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown declares Prop 8 gay marriage ban "unacceptable") Perhaps he should first look at the situation in the UK, where he can do something about it.

Under the enactment "Proposition 8" the situation in California is that mixed-sex couples can get married and same-sex couples can get inferior civil partnerships. This is exactly the same unequal arrangement that exists in the UK. Worryingly people are now calling for civil partnerships to be extended to mixed-sex couples, with some unable to disguise their hope that it will lead to the extinction of marriage.

So here's a simple suggestion. Let's sweep away this two-tier, pseudo "separate-but-equal" arrangement, abolish civil partnerships and make the state marriage laws gender blind and available to all. Any couple should have the right to enter into this great institution, to partake in the responsibilities it involves and derive the benefits from it. Those who do not wish to enter into marriage should not be entitled to the benefits by any side provision.

It will be an equal system. And there are other benefits as well - it will be a simpler system than there is at the moment. It will protect marriage in the way the current arrangement does not by removing inferior alternatives and allowing more people to partake in it. And if the UK Prime Minister wants to condemn inequality in other parts of the world, he will not be a hypocrite.

Equality of opportunity or equality of outcome?

Sometimes I wonder if John Bercow is a mole sent to undermine causes from within. Then I wonder if he even knows what cause he's pushing for.

Bercow has written the astonishing piece Where is the Tory Harriet Harman? for The Guardian. There's not much to send Conservatives into a greater spasm of anger than "an article in The Guardian" but "Harriet Harman" is the nuclear option. Exactly why we need an upper-class anti-equality hopeless partisan is beyond me.

But for those who can get past that, Bercow is reiterating the call once again for the party to adopt all-women and all-black or minority ethnic shortlists. With many seats having all ready selected (and some having picked candidates for two term strategies) it's an odd time to be raising this.

And I have to wonder if something isn't getting lost in this debate. Is the aim to simply get more women and black & minority ethic people into Parliament or is it to create a level playing field in which neither is an impediment to being selected? And I am not naive to believe that there is no bias in the current selection process, though I believe things have been getting better in recent years and that if the Conservatives had done a lot better in the last election the proportions in the parliamentary party would be different.

There is something absolutely nobody argues for. It is called the "compulsory all-men shortlist". It can still happen but rarely (recently one Conservative selection wound up with only women on the final shortlist out of their own merit, not because it was imposed; I can't remember the last all-male shortlist). But nobody wants to bring it in because they rightly accept that it would reinforce the existing bias.

And yet there is a real danger that all-women shortlists will have this effect. If for instance one of a pair of associations in an area were to have an all-women shortlist imposed upon it, what would be the effect on a women's chance of being selected in the other seat? I believe it would decrease the chances. For people would feel that men would have a more limited chance and so would boost them. "Open" seats would rapidly become regarded as "male" seats because some women would instead be on the shortlist for the AWS seat, whilst those who did go for the open seat would be up against demands for "balance" locally. When the language of statistical exactitude is used to justify positive discrimination it is very hard to argue against it being used to justify discrimination in the other direction.

And this is before we even get into the thornier area of all-BME shortlists, a description that crudely assumes the BME population of this country is homogeneous and that representation could be easily apportioned out. And then would all-BME shortlists be used across the country or would they only apply to certain parts? Would Adam Afriyie have been selected for Windsor if all-BME shortlists were in existence or would he instead have been expected to go for a far less winnable seat with a shortlist?

Surely the real goal must be to break down barriers in open selection, not try to match discrimination with discrimination? Equality of opportunity will, I admit, take longer to achieve but it is by far the better goal for the long term. Equality of outcome breeds resentment but also risks ghettoisation.

A battle of equalities - or the onset of culture wars?

It's hard to know what to make of the Lillian Ladele case. But it has plenty of elements to make various people's blood boil. Discrimination on the basis of religion. Discrimination on the basis of sexuality. (Which puzzles me as talking about equality between marriage and civil partnerships is a total oxymoron.) And of course it had to happen in Islington.

Now I've not yet had a chance to read the tribunal outcome but from what I've seen in the media the tribunal focused on the point of whether or not she was being bullied in the workplace for her religion and whether Islington was still able to deliver the service rather than over whether she was right to refuse to perform civil partnership ceremonies. (As an aside if you were entering into a civil partnership wouldn't you want a registrar who actually wanted to do the job, rather than one who was forced to by their employer and the law?) Also a point that hasn't received that much attention is that the nature of the job has changed since she took it - until late 2007 Islington registrars were effectively working freelance and thus her colleagues were taking civil partnerships and so it wasn't an issue. (The Guardian: Paying to be discriminated against - The decision in favour of a registrar who refused to deal with gay couples sets a hugely dangerous precedent) So it's not a case of someone taking up a job even though they disagreed with part of what it entailed - the requirements of the job changed whilst she was in post. This may also have some bearing on whether or not it was possible to resign.

But what is worrying is the way that so much of the reaction to the tribunal outcome is deeply polarised, going beyond the issue of the balance between equality of religion and equality of sexuality and into what feels scarily like the opening shots in something like the US "culture war". Some of the comments I've seen on the web have been incredibly anti-religious whilst other comments sound like a gloating victory over "political correctness". Naturally the case emerging from the UK's answer to San Francisco adds to fuel to the fire.

For a long time issues of both religion and personal behaviour have traditionally been regarded as "issues of conscience" and not made party political issues. Quite apart from the party management advantage it has also meant that the parties have not been divided down such lines and the UK has for the most part avoided the US "Red States-Blue States" divide that leads to radicals on each side almost demonising the other and making control over issues such as education ridiculously tense. And it encourages minority mentalities whereby particular groups in society get told they must support a party not because they agree with it on the basics but because only that party looks out for it and the other hates it. In turn it leads to a belief that when the other party is in control everything will be bad.

Some of that last paragraph doesn't sound too dissimilar to behaviour in certain quarters of UK politics does it? Is this really to the benefit of the country?