Mail Online 12 Dec 2012
The minister for faith has broken ranks on gay marriage to warn that David Cameron’s controversial legislation could have a string of ‘unintended consequences’. In a letter leaked to the Daily Mail, Baroness Warsi suggests schools could be required to teach about same-sex unions, while individual priests and churches who refuse to conduct them risk being sued. Her intervention will embolden more than 100 Tory MPs who are threatening to vote against the legislation in the New Year. Writing to Culture Secretary Maria Miller, who unveiled the planned legislation on Tuesday, Lady Warsi raises a series of questions about the change in the law. She demands ‘clarity’ on how the new law will properly ‘protect religious freedom’ and asks: ‘What legal support will be afforded to churches and other places of worship if they’re challenged individually or as an organisation?’ Lady Warsi, who attends Cabinet and is also senior minister for the Foreign Office, asks what legal advice the Government has received in relation to the compatibility of gay marriage legislation with ‘domestic and European law’. Most contentiously, the peer, who held talks on the issue this week with Church of England leaders, asks: ‘What consideration has been given to the teaching of equal marriage in schools, both faith schools and non-faith schools?’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2247266/Gay-marriage-law-Baroness-Warsi-claims-equality-string-unintended-consequences.html
