Chris

Very true, although what I was saying was in answer to a different question entirely. Dr Wadd's question, in so many words, was if the word 'marriage' is ok today for atheists, why is it not ok for homosexuals. My answer was, essentially, that the use of the word is seen as ok today for atheists because it is not a current issue, it's something that was dealt with at some distant time in history. No doubt when the law was changed there was a big furore, as there is now over the issue of gay marriage.

I don't want to play semantics over this. I know what I believe to be true about marriage so it matters little to me what other people choose to call it. Christmas is another good example of how a Christian term can be adopted and used in celebration of something quite different by a secular society. I hope I am also mature enough to accept that other people disagree, currently those people are probably a majority in the UK and the laws of the UK can't be set by any minority group. If the democratic majority want to extend marriage to gay couples, and to call it marriage, then it should be allowed to happen. However I suspect that while there is probably broad support for the idea of same-sex legal union, the semantic issue will trouble a lot of people and that it may prove difficult to get it on the statute book for that reason.