Poll: Half of religious people support gay marriage

As the House of Lords prepares to vote on gay marriage, a YouGov poll shows that the opinion of people who regard themselves as ‘religious’ is 48pc against and 44pc in favour of gay marriage. Given the margin of error, this can be seen as an even split. So why the acrimony?

The answer, in my opinion, is the way that David Cameron has gone about this. He ought to have said something like:

‘I’m in favour of religious freedom, and think it should be absolute. It’s come to our attention that some liberal strands of Judaism and Unitarian churches want to conduct same-sex marriage ceremonies but are banned from doing so by the government. The state ought to have no role in religious affairs, so I’m lifting the ban.’

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He could have presented this (as Tony Blair did) as an almost technocratic reform.