Samuel Morrison: The weakness of the opposition to moves to further devalue marriage is concerning

Those who value marriage - who believe that one party to a marital union shouldn’t be able to divorce the other without citing any fault on the part of their husband or wife or even obtaining their consent - would be well advised to start lobbying MLAs who one might have expected to have been exercised about such an issue.

When similar legislation came before the Lords, Lord Morrow to his credit spoke eloquently against it and moved an amendment which sought to preserve the onus which was then on couples in Great Britain to seek reconciliation and attempt to save their marriage. Sadly, none of his colleagues made similar arguments on Monday past.

The weakness of the opposition to moves to further devalue marriage is concerning, particularly when one considers that attacks on institutions and values which have long been regarded as sacrosanct have become common place.

Not only that, but there are increasing efforts to silence those who would dare to voice opposition.

As the editorial of this paper pointed out last week, not only is a frighteningly liberal abortion regime in place in Northern Ireland but Stormont has made it illegal to highlight this fact in the vicinity of places where abortions are performed. Shockingly, it is illegal even to pray with someone outside a hospital if that is judged to be "influencing" someone seeking an abortion. Similarly, displaying a sign quoting the sixth commandment (Thou shalt not kill) makes one liable to arrest in such locations.

The great abolitionist William Wilberforce once remarked, "You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again you did not know" after a nationwide campaign highlighting the evils of slavery. In Northern Ireland in 2024 a Wilberforce style campaign against abortion would be deemed illegal in the Orwellianly named "safe access zones". Is that really progress?

When one recalls that a vast amount of data relating to abortion performed in Northern Ireland - such as the age of the mother, her socioeconomic background, number of pervious abortions, etc - which is available in other parts of the UK simply isn't collected in NI, one could be forgiven for thinking that there is a deliberate desire on the part of the powers that be to stamp out all debate about the matter.

Again, the opposition one might have expected in Stormont simply hasn't materialised. In this mandate only Jim Allister has asked questions seeking to get data about the number of unborn children aborted. The figure since the regulations changed at the end of March 2020 is 7,681.

Some may naively believe that having redefined marriage and destroyed our protection for the unborn, the left is likely to leave it there. Should you harbour such beliefs let me disabuse you of your lethargy. Last week Alliance MLA Eóin Tennyson announced that he plans to bring forward a private members' bill to ban so-called "conversion therapy".

Let’s look at countries where legislation has been passed. In Australia rugby player Israel Folau was effectively driven out of his sport because he dared to quote the apostle Paul's words in II Corinthians 6.

In the Australian state of Victoria, “a religious practice, including but not limited to prayer based practice” is banned under “conversion therapy” legislation. Does Mr Tennyson plan to move us from a situation where he would say people shouldn’t be seeking to make windows into people’s private lives to wanting to make windows into the minister’s counselling room? Time will tell.

Ironically, when it comes to many of these matters the issue boils down to one of respecting individual rights of freedom of speech and religion, values which traditionally have been identified with liberalism.

George Orwell was no religious fundamentalist but as he pointed out, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” A society which cannot tolerate that liberty is headed in a direction which should make us all feel uncomfortable, regardless of our outlook.

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Samuel Morrison is press officer for the TUV