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Meeting of the Parliament 04 February 2014

04 Feb 2014 · S4 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

Marriage and Civil Partnership (Scotland) Bill

Carlaw, Jackson Con West Scotland Watch on SPTV

—but in his own time.

On re-reading that Official Report I saw that there were also eloquent speeches from Nigel Don and John Mason, who put the alternative point of view.

As we move past the amendment stage this afternoon, the Parliament is entitled to take a celebratory attitude to the bill that we are about to pass. I congratulate all those across Scotland who have campaigned to bring this moment about: the Equality Network and its indefatigable parliamentary liaison officer, Tom French, and all the others across Scotland who have done this.

I know that there will be a big party in Hemma tonight. My clubbing days are gone; I do not know whether Jackie Baillie, Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Neil plan to be dancing tonight. I think that Ruth Davidson could be. I look at Jim Hume and see a bit of a wannabe, so it is possible that he will want to be. Today is a celebration.

I echo what I said when I co-sponsored some equal marriage events. My wife and I have enjoyed 26 years of marriage, not civil partnership. I want every couple in Scotland, regardless of their sex, to be able to have exactly the same opportunity to enjoy a long and happy marriage such as we have had.

I also welcome the fact that those couples will be moving into modern Scottish family life. That includes the experience of single parents who are struggling, either through fate or circumstance or choice, to bring up children on their own. It includes my experience: my mother and father were married and I am the married father of two highly opinionated young sons—how they became so highly opinionated, I have no idea. It also includes the experience of same-sex couples. I hope that they will have the opportunity to enjoy marriage, to be able to rear children in a happy and stable family environment and to have everything that goes with that.

I also take a practical point of view. Our country has an ageing demographic. We do not want people to feel that they have to live alone. I want us to do whatever we can to make it possible for any couple to share a life together. If the marriage legislation that we will pass today encourages that, that will be all to the benefit of our nation.

There has been huge change in my lifetime from the brutal atmosphere in which gay people had to live when I was a teenager and young man, when gay people felt that they had to strangle their sexuality. I know some of those people—I am in the Tory party after all. [Laughter.] Okay, it is a common point for everyone else.

Today is a fantastic change to be celebrated in the mood, style, signature and stamp of my country, Scotland. Let me chuck in a bit of musical theatre, because it is that kind of debate, is it not? Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1943 musical “South Pacific” was made into a movie in 1958, the year before I was born. As a 12-year-old, I was confronted by this particular lyric:

You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear,

You’ve got to be taught from year to year,

It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear,

You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught to be afraid

Of people whose eyes are oddly made,

And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade,

You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,

Before you are six or seven or eight,

To hate all the people your relatives hate,

You’ve got to be carefully taught!

I do not ascribe any of those prejudices to anyone in the chamber this afternoon, but what that song said to me as a 12-year-old is that we can come into politics and hope to change the attitudes in the country about sexual, racial and religious equality. We politicians have the opportunity today to be part of a generation that teaches the next generation, without prescribing the word “teach” too strongly, about the kind of country that they want to work in, to live in, to marry in, and the country that I want to vote for tonight.

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Meeting of the Parliament 04 February 2014

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