In what many are now considering to be an unprecedented rollback of civil rights, Bermuda has officially become the first jurisdiction to repeal the legalization of same-sex marriage.
According to Bermuda’s minister of home affairs Walton Brown, the repeal legislation that was signed by Governor John Rankin will bring more balance and stability to the country. Social conservatives who oppose same-sex marriage will appreciate that the reversal means that marriage is between one man and one woman, while progressives will be satisfied with the fact that same-sex couples will still be recognized and protected under the law.
“The act is intended to strike a fair balance between two currently irreconcilable groups in Bermuda, by restating that marriage must be between a male and a female while at the same time recognizing and protecting the rights of same-sex couples,” explained Brown, whose own Progressive Labor Party initially proposed the repeal.
But even though Brown and Governor Rankin may have had good intentions when they supported and helped pass this repeal, LGBT civil rights groups are outraged, claiming that the repeal essentially grants same-sex couples second-class status.
“Governor Rankin and the Bermuda parliament have shamefully made Bermuda the first national territory in the world to repeal marriage equality,” said Ty Cobb, director of Human Rights Campaign Global. Another Bermudian, 64-year-old homosexual Joe Gibbons, said, “I feel enormously disappointed. This is not equality, and the British government has obviously just said, ‘This is not our fight.’”
Before the legislation passed, Labor MP Chris Bryant criticized the bill during a debate in the UK’s House of Commons, calling it a “deeply unpleasant and very cynical piece of legislation.” Bryant later tweeted that the repeal would “undermine [the] UK effort to advance LGBT rights.”
Although the half dozen same-sex marriages that took place in Bermuda between the May of 2017 and the repeal will continue to be recognized, homosexual couples looking to take the next step in their relationship from this point forward will only have the option of registering as a domestic partnership. (Related: Begging the government for a license to marry isn’t freedom; it’s enslavement to big brother.)
Truthfully, the outrage being expressed by Bermudians and members of Britain’s LGBT community alike shouldn’t come as a surprise. According to a 2016 survey, British people, especially Christians, are beginning to become more accepting towards not only same-sex marriage, but also the act of getting an abortion, pornography and having sex before marriage.
More specifically, 64 percent of the public in the United Kingdom now say that same-sex relationships are “not wrong at all,” which is up from 57 percent back in 2013. With regards to same-sex marriage, roughly 75 percent of Brits believe that it is “not wrong at all,” up from 42 percent from back when the question was first asked in the year 1983. Furthermore, 70 percent of Brits feel that abortion should be allowed for women who don’t want to have a child. What was most shocking about this survey, though, is that the majority of British Christians were following these trends.
This is a clear sign that the UK as a whole is becoming much less traditional than it once was, and certainly explains why there has been so much backlash over the repeal of same-sex marriage in Bermuda. (Related: Why is it that the same corporations that support gay marriage also support baby chop shops that harvest organs for profit?)
America is much less traditional than it once was as well, which, to many conservatives living in the country, isn’t a good sign. While it’s important to strive to create a world of peace and tolerance, there are also certain traditions and deeply-rooted beliefs that are worth hanging on to.
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