So, Cameron got his new cabinet from IKEA...

You've probably all realised by now that David Cameron has had a reshuffle of his Cabinet. (If you hadn't noticed, come out of the hole you've been hiding in for the last week, you missed yesterday's Doctor Who.) Its sparked lots of debate over the government's transport policy and possible expansion of Heathrow. What it hasn't yet sparked, is a serious talk about what the clear shift to the right that this new cabinet clearly is means for the LGBT community. There are one or two things which don't bode well. 

Let's start with the positives. Openly gay Lib Dem MP David Laws is back in government; he resigned as Chief Secretary to the Treasury after just 17 days in the post after it emerged he'd been claiming for his boyfriend's house on expenses. This time, he's not in the treasury, but is a Schools Minister, which should be good for trying to beat homophobic and transphobic bullying in schools. He can also keep our 'right honourable' Education Secretary Michael Gove in check, make sure he's not doing anything too stupid with our schools. Sadly, Gove didn't lose his job in the reshuffle. Maybe Cameron's logic is that we're a lost generation anyway, so if Gove absolutely has to be in the cabinet, then at the top of the Department for Education, where he can't do any real damage...

After this point, I'm having trouble thinking about the positives about the reshuffle which concern the gay community, I really am. You see, when you discover that Chris Grayling, the former Shadow Home Secretary who lost out on a cabinet job last time round because he said that Christian b&b owners should be able to deny gay couples a room on grounds of their sexuality, has become Justice Secretary, you really begin to question the sanity of the big cheese in No. 10. A homophobic, non-lawyer Justice Secretary, who'd have thought? Oh, and when I said non-lawyer, did I mention he's the first non-lawyer Justice Secretary since the Tudor times?

However, Good Sirs and Gentle Ladies, my biggest worry on what this new cabinet means for the LGBTQ community is this: allow me to introduce you to your new Equalities Minister, Maria Miller. In the past, she has voted:

• Against Gay rights, including adoption. 
• Against a bill which I forget the name of, under which lesbian couples would have been able to undergo fertility treatment. 
• Against the religious and racial hatred bill
• In favour of defining the terms "homophobia", "racial hatred" and "prejudice" as merely being somebody's 'Freedom of Speech'. 

And they're just the votes she took part in. 

Shocked? I am. Maybe I shouldn't be; after all, this is a Tory led government, but I had hoped that Britain would be taking a step forward towards equality for all, not backwards, as Miller's appointment seems to indicate. They certainly seemed to be doing that; David Cameron has announced his support for marriage equality, and a public consultation on the issue went out, the results of which are to be published soon...ish. Hopefully we're still going ahead with getting equal marriage (or, as some people like to call it, gay marriage) by the end of parliament in 2015, despite this questionable appointment to the Equality office.

I think Cameron has certainly made a few mistakes in his reshuffle; certainly the appointment of Maria Miller as Equalities Minister is something which will linger in the minds of minority communities, such as the LGBTQ one, when we get to the election in 2015, regardless of any possible future reshuffles in which the equalities brief may go elsewhere. Clearly it'll be a while before we see how well Miller does her job; I for one will be keeping a close eye on how well she is or isn't doing, and she and the government would be well advised not to underestimate the importance of continuing to move towards greater equality and doing more towards eliminating homophobia and transphobia in schools and in the workplace, and in our society in general (yes, I know the Equalities Act 2010 forbids discrimination on grounds of sexuality or gender identity, by no stretch of the imagination should we assume that it's been eradicated completely).

So what does marriage actually mean?

I share Todostrieb's opinion on marriage as a whole; I know more ex-married people than I do married people, my parents should be included in this statistic, and I'm not sure if I'll ever get married for a number of reasons, chief among them has to be the lack of boyfriend to propose to (me). Despite that, I'm always one for a party, and what else is a wedding if not the excuse to get drunk and/or laid? As such, I clearly do not need to point out that I am completely for gay marriage, or as I like to call it, marriage. I found this pie chart, which kind of weighs up the pros and cons quite nicely.

It really is that simple.

When the UK legalised Civil Partnerships for same-sex couples, I was probably too young to have had an opinion - at least, an opinion which meant anything. For those of you who don't know what a Civil Partnership means, it's essentially exactly the same as marriage in all but name, and you can only have one if you're gay. To any poor heterosexual people out there (I'm looking at Miu), as it stands you can only get married or you can not get married, if you'd rather have a civil partnership because it sounds less binding, tough.

That's the problem I have with marriage legislation in this country at the moment. While a Civil Partnership and a Marriage are exactly the same thing in all but name (both give you the same rights in the eye of the law, supposedly), one sounds less impressive than the other, and the more impressive sounding one is also better understood than the other. If Miu and her boyfriend were to spontaneously announce "We're getting married!", then everybody would celebrate and throw a party because marriage is a universally understood term. If I were to announce that my currently non-existent boyfriend and I are "getting partnered"... I can just picture the underwhelming response and the shy "what the fuck does that mean" response that is bound to meet us.

Told you so.

And so we've arrived in a situation where the terms Civil Partnership and Marriage have been clouded by the public's ignorance of their meaning, and who they're for. As far as I'm concerned, as long as the big cheeses in Government call something like marriage one thing for LGBTQ people and another for everybody else, then they will never be truly equal, and that is why marriage should become legal for gay people and civil partnerships become available to straight people, if they want them. I know there's a whole other debate about religion and gay marriage which Mel went into quite nicely - I must admit that some of the things coming out of some religious people's mouths (or is that arses?) have been frankly outrageous, but I suppose that it just highlights the blatant homophobia which runs through parts of the church. What they can't seem to understand is that what the government is proposing is that all civil venues (like registry offices etc) must perform a gay wedding if called upon to do so; religious venues do not. That's not redefining marriage, nor is it damaging marriage - if I remember correctly, Henry VIII created the Church of England to enable him to divorce one of his many wives, unless I'm seriously old-fashioned, divorce seems more damaging to the 'institute' of marriage than allowing more people to actually get married....

Sorry, that turned into a bit of a rant. I will finish by saying that I have to admit that a Tory-led government were the last people I expected to hold a consultation on the subject, let alone try and legalise equal marriage before the next election, so even if they fail in everything else (tuition fees, anybody?), I suppose I'll have some sympathy for Cameron and Clegg when they get kicked out of Downing Street in May 2015.

On a completely unrelated note, I'm helping my mum move to Germany next week, so I won't be around to post next Friday - if any of you lovely people would like to submit something to post in my place, please feel free to do so!
Rory