Why not gay marriage, Ed?

At several points in his interview with Sunny Hundal, published on Liberal Conspiracy today, Ed Miliband comes across either as lacking the courage of his leftwing convictions, or as lacking those convictions altogether.  He continues to be heavy on soggy rhetoric (e.g. “We have to be proud of our record, but we must apply our values to a blank sheet of paper”).  And although he wants to position himself as the 'change candidate', who can make a decisive break with the New Labour era, he cannot bring himself to repudiate some of the worst aspects of New Labour's record (on its war on benefit cheats, he says “For the most part I don’t think we were too harsh").  One of the very few clear lines he takes could have the consequence of denying Labour a chance at returning to power (he rules out a coalition with the Lib Dems).

Finally, there is this:

Would you allow gays to be legally married, rather than just be registered as a civil partnership?

He hesitates. “I will listen to what people have to say on going further than that if there is a demand. No one has yet put that to me in the leadership election.” He said his feeling was that not enough people were asking for the policy.

The coalition has promised to 'consult' on gay marriage (with whom?), and now Ed Miliband, bravely,  says that he will also 'listen' to people about it.  He suggests that not enough people are asking for it.  This implies that he is not now listening to the gay activists who are already campaigning on the issue, and also raises the intriguing question of how many people demanding gay marriage would, for Ed Miliband, seem like 'enough' to encourage him to get behind it.

It is difficult to understand why Ed Miliband thinks this issue is not clearcut.   What possible good secular reason could one have to resist implementing full marriage equality? I am at a loss to think of one.  Civil partnership legislation was of course a hugely important step.  But it was just that - a step, not the end goal.  Civil partnerships are to marriage equality what AV is to PR  (assuming you like PR in the first place, of course).  The status quo gives us marriage apartheid, and will continue to be seen as implicitly endorsing the view that gay relationships are inferior until it is changed.  

Religious groups will continue to regard gay marriage as unconscionable, of course.  They can refuse to conduct them, then.  It is not for them to veto marriage equality any more than it is for  (say) the Catholic Church to demand a ban on heterosexual second marriages.   It is often said that marriage is an essentially religious institution.  It is not.  What counts as a legal marriage is decided by the state.  If it were down to religion to decide, we would be allowing men to have multiple prepubescent brides.

True enough, some gay people prefer civil partnerships, e.g. on grounds that they do not have connotations of ownership, as marriage is sometimes seen to do.  But that just suggests, though, that civil partnerships should also be available, to gay and straight couples who want them.  It's important to note that there isn't anything wrong with civil partnerships, just with the inequality.

It is a deep shame that, when presented with such an easy opportunity to support equality, Miliband flunked it.  Not that his rivals have done any better to date, of course.  Labour is currently in the lamentable position of having nobody among the current crop of leadership candidates who openly  and unequivocally supports gay marriage.  Meanwhile, the Tory mayor of London now does.*  If the candidates want to offer genuine change, they could start here.

ADDENDUM: @ConorPope, on Twitter, points me to this post, by Kerry McCarthy, in which she suggests that there may be practical roadblocks to implementing marriage equality.  McCarthy writes:

Civil partnerships are not the same as marriage. And we won't have true equality until they are. I've tried looking into this, and the explanation I got as to why the UK hasn't gone down the path of other countries who have legalised gay marriage was that it's more difficult in the UK because whereas in those countries you can only be married in a civil ceremony and can then choose to go on and have a religious service should you want one, in the UK you can be married in church without the civil element. Which I took to mean that you couldn't have gay marriage in this country without persuading the Church of England, Catholic church, etc, to accept it.

I don't understand what the difficulty is supposed to be here.  In this country, heterosexual couples can already choose between a civil and religious marriage. the former being conducted in a registry office.  Gay marriage would, in the first instance, extend the availability of civil marriage to gay couples.  Religious marriage could also be allowed in churches that agree to conduct them.  You would not have to win over or secure the consent of religious denominations opposed to gay marriage for any of this.   As I say in the original post, those that oppose gay marriage needn't perform them.

* UPDATE 8th July: Thanks to Patrick, in the comments section, for pointing out that initial reports that Johnson had come out in favour of gay marriage at London Pride may not have been an accurate relection of his position after all.  Pink News reports that, 'Following [Johnson's] remarks at Pride, a City Hall statement made clear he supported civil partnerships, with no mention of marriage.'