David Jones Is Quite Wrong

Those Tories, David Cameron merely needs to take his eye off them for a minute and one starts saying something silly.

Step forward David Jones MP, Secretary of State for Wales, who has decided not only to suggest something many anti-LGBT people believe (that same-sex parenting is, at the very least, not ideal) but to also go one step further when he says:

"I regard marriage as an institution that has developed over many centuries, essentially for the provision of a warm and safe environment for the upbringing of children, which is clearly something that two same-sex partners can't do."   

"Which is not to say that I'm in any sense opposed to stable and committed same-sex partnerships."

So what he has just said there is that CLEARLY same-sex partners can't offer a "warm and safe environment" for children. This is quite a different idea to that proposed by more moderate, and thoughtful, opponents of same-sex parenting who focus on whether the life chances of children are better or worse with same-sex parents. That is a debate that has been going on for a very long time and one I'm not going to get involved with (although, full disclosure, my boyfriend's son lives with us both but I wouldn't claim to be his "parent"). But what David Jones has said is that same-sex parents can't love children as much as heterosexual parents (even adoptive ones) nor offer them safety. This is quite obviously wrong. It stinks, in fact, of the age-old insults leveled at gay men that we are all paedophiles.

He later said:

"I made the point of stressing that I was fully supportive of committed same-sex relationships. I also strongly approve of civil partnerships." 

"I did not say in the interview that same-sex partners should not adopt children and that is not my view."  

 "I simply sought to point out that, since same-sex partners could not biologically procreate children, the institution of marriage was one that, in my opinion, should be reserved to opposite sex partners."

That is categorically NOT what he said. David Jones. What a piece of work.