LGBT

MPs have voted by 400 to 175 in favour of allowing gay marriage this evening in the House of Commons.

Introducing the Bill, equalities minister Maria Miller said the "depth of feeling, love and commitment between same-sex couples is no different from that depth of feeling between opposite-sex couples". 

"The Bill enables society to recognise that commitment in the same way, too, through marriage. Parliament should value people equally in the law, and enabling same-sex couples to marry removes the current differentiation and distinction," she said. 

Tory supporters of the Bill were joined by the majority of the Labour benches, including Tottenham MP David Lammy who attacked the idea homosexual and heterosexual people could be "separate but equal". 

“Separate but equal are the words that justified sending black children to different schools than their white peers,” he said. “It is an expert from the phrase book of the segregationist and the racist." 

“It is the same statement, the same ideas and the same delusion that we borrowed in this country to say that women could vote but only if they were married and only when they were over 30. 

"Separate is not equal, so let us be rid of it. As long as there is one rule for us and another for them we allow the barriers of acceptance to go unchallenged. As long as our statute book suggests love between two men or two women is unworthy of being recongised through marriage we allow the rot of homophobia to fester."