Why the Lib Dems are wrong on marriage and why it matters

There is a knee jerk reaction in the liberal political class, and its groupies, of attacking anything that comes out of the Conservative party on the structure of our society.

So naked political opportunism means they attempt to join the dots between "Back to basics" and recognising marriage in the tax system ( marriage is of course discriminated against in the benefits system ).

We use tax to encourage and change peoples behaviour all the time, and all parties agree with this approach.

Marriage has spectacular benefits for society ( and there is every reason to believe that civil partnerships will also ). The long term, until death do us part, commitment provides better health ( and lower NHS costs ), free care for the sick and elderly (savings to the NHS and benefits and local council services - for example my Grandfather looked after my dying Grandmother for years before he finally had to allow her to be put into a home ), and vastly better child rearing with better outcomes by an order of magnitude.

It is a Judo/Christian principle to let people share in the benefits their work and actions bring. And encouraging marriage also improves the strength and cohesion of our society.

Some of the strongest parts of our society are Muslim, Sikh and Hindu families - almost all I would hazard to guess married. Are the Lib Dems really wanting to discriminate against those pillars of our society ?

The arguments used against the proposal to recognise and share the benefits marriage brings to society through the tax system are the usual debating tricks of using wild examples which allow table thumping and self righteous claims of being unfair. ( See Nick Clegg doing his fake indignation routine on the cheating husband. )

That is of course good politics, and we know the Lib Dems excel at politics. However its bad for society, the country and especially the life chances of the children who it will damage.

Its time to honour marriage again in our society and to value it and share its benefits.

The socialist way of defending marriage

One the socialist have finished their little hissy fits about some single mother being discriminated against justifying damning the common good by not supporting marriage - as the Conservatives want to - they should watch out for what their own side is up to.

I've blogged on this before ( see here and here ), but their solution to the failure of cohabiting couples to take the responsibilities of married couples is to say they're all married in effect anyway.

Its common law marriage ( which everyone used to think existed - but doesn't right now).

You will have to opt out of the state induced marriage or else you get to share the legal responsibilities for you "partner" that the marrieds have to carry.

This will be interesting - see report on the 'Justice' ministry review here.

There will be a lot of people getting very worried about this - my bet is most of them will be males who used the "we don't need a bit of paper to prove our love" or "why spend all that money just for a piece of paper" ploys.

Doubt it will win Labour many votes - the unintended effect will probably be more atomised families - with the men only staying the night sometimes. More single mothers - oh hold on now I know why the guardianistas will like it ...