By: Mike Hosking | Wednesday, August 01, 2012 10:12 AM

If we’re to have a conscience vote on gay marriage, whose conscience are they voting on?

If an MP is a representative of an electorate, are they voting on what the MP believes is the right thing to do, or what they think their electorate might think of the matter? Or should they actually poll the electorate so the vote is a fair representation of the voters’ thoughts? And then what about the list MPs who represent no one? Why in a conscience matter would their vote count for anything? But that's how it’s going to be done. Our MPs will potentially make history.

Social matters like this are often more profound and important than many of the other decisions they make because they’re matters that go beyond political leanings and economic doctrine. They go deep into people’s personal lives and homes and in that I am not sure we elect governments to do such things. We elect governments to basically run the place on our behalf. Taxes, roads, schools, hospitals, foreign relations. I am not sure any given parliament should ever really be in the business of telling us how to conduct our personal relationships. But what makes it trickier is I am not sure other people should be in the business of telling us how to conduct our personal relationships either.

If you’re gay, you’re gay. It doesn't bother me. If you want to marry someone of the same sex, that doesn't bother me either because who on earth am I to run some sort of commentary on it. Even if I don't think it’s normal, who am I to tell you what to do and how to do it. You can be opposed to things without having to impose yourself on them. If that applies to me and you, then a further step away from the crux of it all is surely the politician who is way too far removed to impose his or her personal view on proceedings. They can run the country without having to run everything.

Further weakening the establishment’s entitlement to tell us what to do and how to do it is the performance of the status quo which is largely built on history and religious belief. Marriage is between a man and a woman but its sanctity starts to fray round the edges a bit when you start to inflict some of the modern statistics like the divorce rate. That's before you get to some of the difficulties certain branches of religion have had when it comes to behaving in a way God might not have frowned upon, far less the legal establishment. So who are they to dictate to us how this whole thing should unfold?

It makes all this, to use a very old cliché, easier said than done. In such personal matters there are no absolutes, certainly not from a government. I have trouble trusting many of them to run an economy, far less laws around personal relationships.

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