In the run-up to a parliamentary debate on 5 February 2013, the thinktank ResPublica has published a paper opposing equal marriage. The authors, Roger Scruton and Phillip Blond, both well-known in Conservative circles, appear to argue that allowing same-sex as well as opposite-sex couples to marry undermines Western civilisation, says Ekklesia associate Savitri Hensman. The paper makes some interesting points, but its case is ultimately flawed and unreliable on practical, theological, historical and legal grounds.

Baptist evangelical leader the Rev Steve Chalke has set out his theological and pastoral argument for supporting same-sex relationships in a new article.

Vitriolic attacks on marriage equality in Christmas sermons by senior Catholic figures in England and Wales have been criticised as unfair and inaccurate.

The invisibility and silence on the trans aspect of the government's equal marriage proposals highlights the reductionist arguments of some of the pressure groups and the way that the debate is more complex than they wish to acknowledge, says Sally Rush. This silence is symptomatic of the everyday marginalisation, invisibility and misunderstanding trans people face within the media and wider society. It needs to be broken, just as the discrimination currently enshrined in law needs to be removed.