Mal Fletcher comments

Mal Fletcher

To debate an issue, according to most dictionaries, is to engage in argument by discussing opposing ideas, or to deliberate and consider various views. The freedom to engage in rigorous debate is one of the primary indicators of a healthy society.

By any standard definition, the current 'debate' about the future status and potential redefining of marriage - and therefore family - which is often mentioned by Prime Minister David Cameron, is no debate at all.

As things stand, there is no public and even-handed airing of issues for and against. There is no careful deliberation about what changes made today will mean for society as a whole - psychologically, sociologically or economically.

And no consideration is being given to what changes made today might mean for future generations.

Instead, we hear in the main only one side of the argument. In the public forum, it is presented as a fait accompli, largely by members of various elites who seem to feel that they are, by design of Nature, the final arbiters of social mores.

The Law Society provides a good example. Representing as it does the interests of lawyers in England and Wales, this group presumably respects proven social institutions and current laws.

It seems that for them, though, the issue of what constitutes a marriage - and family - is already settled, despite the fact that the law itself has not reached that conclusion.

Last week, the Society withdrew permission for the use of its London headquarters for an event debating issues surrounding same-sex marriage and marriage in general.

The non-political and non-religious event was to have been addressed by various lawyers, journalists and think-tank leaders and by Sir Paul Coleridge, the Family Division judge who recently launched a new charity to combat marital break-up.

By way of explanation, the Society offered up the rather lame but nonetheless revealing excuse that debating such issues as same-sex marriage breached its 'diversity policy'.

Surely, there must be someone within the Society's upper echelons who can see the irony in claiming a diversity policy that allows no diversity of opinion.

The view of the Society is not currently reflected in the statute books. Nor has it ever been seriously considered in the long and often illustrious history of our civilisation. Yet they hold to it as forcefully as if it had it been a celebrated part of our core social fabric for generations.

The key issue here is not solely the institution of marriage, however. The lack of debate itself has wider implications for us as a society, for it goes to the nub of how we are governed and by whom.

Noam Chomsky offered this on the dangers to society of restricting debate: 'The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.'