By Associated Press, 12 June 2012.
(LONDON) — The Church of England formally objected Tuesday to the government’s proposal to permit gay marriages, asserting that the church’s historic understanding is that marriage is a union of a woman and a man.
Prime Minister David Cameron is backing a proposal to permit civil marriages for gay couples, despite the strong opposition of some lawmakers in his Conservative Party. The government’s proposal would also allow heterosexual couples to form civil partnerships, which were introduced for gay couples in 2005.
The issue has caused friction between Cameron, who is allowing party members to vote their conscience on the legislation, and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg who expects all members of his Liberal Democrat party to support the change.
The church’s paper was released on the day when the traditional marriage group Coalition for Marriage plans to bring to Cameron’s office a petition with more than half a million signatures opposing the change.
In a paper drafted by English bishops and the Archbishops’ Council, the church argued that gay couples already have many of the legal benefits of marriage through civil partnerships and worried that churches could ultimately be required to perform same-sex marriages.
“To change the nature of marriage for everyone will be divisive and deliver no obvious legal gain given the rights already conferred by civil partnerships,” the church said.
“We believe that imposing for essentially ideological reasons a new meaning on a term as familiar and fundamental as marriage would be deeply unwise.”
Gay marriage backers pointed out that the legislation would only focus on civil marriages and would exempt religious groups from any duty to perform same-sex marriages.
Peter Tatchell, a leader of the Equal Love campaign for gay marriage, accused the church of “scaremongering, exaggerating the effects of same-sex marriage and advocating legal discrimination.”
About a fourth of weddings in England take place in Church of England churches, which are legally obligated to provide a marriage service for any resident of a local parish who wishes it, regardless of church membership.
7 September 2010
ReplyDeletehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/sep/07/young-gay-men-hiv-epidemic
Public messages and campaigns about the dangers of unsafe sex do not appear to be getting through to men who have sex with men, the researchers say – particularly the young ones.
The research was carried out by scientists at Ghent University in Belgium, and there is every indication that their findings hold true for the UK. Nick Partridge, the chief executive of the Terrence Higgins Trust, said that gay men were the group most at risk of HIV infection in the UK.
The Health Protection Agency (HPA), which monitors HIV numbers in the UK, warns every year of the rising rate of infections among men who have sex with men (MSM). In its last full report, for 2009, it said that the rate of infection among gay men remained high, even though there had been a slight overall drop.
HIV infection can go unnoticed for years, but the HPA report said one in five of those diagnosed had become infected within the previous six months – suggesting recent risky behaviour was to blame.
A 2008 report specifically on HIV among men who have sex with men said there were around 32,000 living with HIV in the UK. Just under half of all new diagnoses were among men who had sex with men, and 82% of the infections were probably acquired within the UK.
The Belgian researchers, Kristen Chalmet and colleagues from the Aids Reference Laboratory at Ghent University, found one "striking and alarming" cluster of cases. Over the nine years of the study, 57 men acquired genetically very similar viruses, they say. Eight of them did so in the last year. "Members of this cluster are significantly younger than the rest of the population and have more chlamydia and syphilis infections," they write today, in the open access journal BioMed Central Infectious Diseases.
Even excluding that group from the study, there was still a relationship between HIV infection and contracting syphilis, which suggested risky sexual behaviour.
The study found two main types of HIV, but their analysis found that those infected with the two sub-types were "significantly different populations". The vast majority of cases of infection within Belgium were sub-type B cases, and those infected were most often men who have sex with men. The non-B cases were more likely to be in heterosexuals and to have been acquired abroad.
"We clearly demonstrate that, despite the existence of prevention programmes, easily available testing facilities and a supposedly broad public awareness of the infection and its possible routes of transmission, MSM still account for the majority of local onward transmissions," they write.
"Continuous efforts to sustain prevention programmes targeting MSM are definitely needed."
Nick Partridge echoed the call for targeted campaigns. "Gay men are still the most at risk of HIV infection in the UK. We also know that more than a quarter of people with HIV in the UK are currently undiagnosed, and they're far more likely to pass the virus on than those who know they have it." "Targeted HIV prevention programmes are key to reducing the numbers of new infections each year. But we'd also argue for innovative testing services to better diagnose men who've been at most risk."
Professor Pat Cane, head of the HPA's antiviral unit, said work done in the UK with the Medical Research Council, "has shown that there are two predominant sources of HIV circulating in the UK at the moment – one in men who have sex with men (HIV1, sub-type B) and the other associated with sub-Saharan Africa (non B, HIV1)."