British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s Advisor Calls Same-Sex Marriage Opponents “Bigots”

Country: United Kingdom

Date of incident: September 4, 2012


A former senior advisor to Nick Clegg says supporters of traditional marriage are “bigots” and Mr Clegg should have said so too in a speech but changed it after public furor.

Mr Clegg was due to give a speech that referred to those who are against redefining marriage as “bigots”, but the word was removed after a furore. However Richard Reeves, the former Director of Strategy for the Liberal Democrat leader, says: “Here’s the thing: they are bigots”.

Last week’s draft speech which Nick Clegg was due to make included the sentence: “Continued trouble in the economy gives the bigots a stick to beat us with, as they demand we ‘postpone’ the equalities agenda in order to deal with ‘the things people really care about’.” But the revised version issued by Mr Clegg’s officials replaced “the bigots” with “some people”.

Mr Reeves, who helped draw up the Government’s proposals on redefining marriage, made the comments in an article for the New Statesman magazine.

He also claimed “opponents of same-sex marriages will be seen, in fairly short historical order, in the same light as those who opposed mixed-race marriages”. His comments came as he backed Mr Clegg to “complete the journey of liberalisation” for the Liberal Democrats.

We thank the Christian Institute for reporting!

 

Source:

The Christian Institute (http://www.christian.org.uk/news/same-sex-marriage-opponents-are-bigots-said-ex-clegg-aide/)