Polyamory is not for the birds

As the Scottish Parliament considers legalising same-sex marriages, it is worth remembering that, no sooner was the ink dry on the legislation allowing them in England and Wales than a legal challenge was launched to force the Church of England to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies, making a nonsense of Maria Miller's 'quadruple lock'. Not only that, but all those scare-mongerers who warned that widening the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples would open the door to demands for other types of relationship to be recognised don't seem quite so laughable now, as the BBC turns its attention to promoting polyamorous relationships.

Now, Calton may be old-fashioned, or maybe just old, but sea eagles mate for life with a bird of the opposite sex, because even a rudimentary understanding of biology shows us that two (and only two) birds, one of either sex, are required to produce a chick and both are needed to successfully rear it to maturity. (And, while he remembers, Calton would like to congratulate the East Coast couple on their first son. Hopefully they will think of a better name than 13white1 soon!) Why humans should want to deviate from this family set-up is, quite frankly, beyond him and his real concern is what effect it will have on the children? If consenting adults want to make life hard for themselves by having multiple relationships, that's up to them (one is hard enough work Calton would have thought) but children don't have the choice. Some would say that it doesn't matter what sort of family children grow up in as long as it is loving, but do we really know that? What about stability? We do know that heterosexual marriages are more likely to last than heterosexual unmarried couples. We don't have any reliable data yet on homosexual or polyamorous relationships. That doesn't seem to stop social work departments embarking on what may turn out to be the biggest social experiment of all time in placing children with homosexual couples, sometimes in preference to heterosexual couples.

Marriage, between one man and one woman for life, has been the foundation of our society for centuries. We might like to think that we are more enlightened in the 21st century but that assertion hardly stands up to scrutiny when you look at our society. We are not progressing - we are regressing. So, what gives us or our politicians the right to redefine marriage, and by inference, the family? Nothing, in this eagle's opinion.