Sara Scarlett

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Saudi Arabia is an apartheid state

Sara Scarlett / Foreign Affairs / 0 comments

26/03/2017

The label ‘Apartheid’ is bandied around frequently these days, sadly it hasn’t stuck to the one State who, in my humble opinion, not only deserves it but whose human rights atrocities are routinely ignored and glossed over by the International Community for the sake of not rocking the boat. Unlike other States, whose human rights atrocities are more fashionable as cause celebres, Saudi Arabia’s prolific human rights abuses are ignored for the sake of business as usual.

Apartheid is originally defined as a system of institutionalised racial segregation and discrimination in South Africa between 1948 and 1994. What Saudi Arabia practices is a system of institutionalised gender segregation and discrimination. Feminist psychologist Phyllis Chesler defines Gender Apartheid as ‘practices which condemn girls and women to a separate and subordinate sub-existence…’ These descriptions describe the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia accurately and I’m not the only Arab Woman who thinks so:

Gender Apartheid is the best word to describe the situation in Saudi Arabia. I don’t believe there is any other place in the world where gender decides everything a person does on a daily basis and to the minutest details. To the outside world this manifests in the ban on women driving and the compulsory Abaya. However, it goes much deeper than that in that gender discrimination is institutionalized in every sector of the Saudi government. The majority of government ministries are off limits to women, both as visitors and as employees.

Elham Manea:

Women in the Kingdom, a 2008 Human Rights Watch report maintains, are infringes on their basic human rights.

In other words, every adult Saudi woman, regardless of her economic or social status, must obtain permission from her male guardian to work, travel, study, seek medical treatment or marry. She is also deprived of making the most trivial decisions on behalf of her children. This system is supported by the imposition of complete sex segregation, which prevents women from participating meaningfully in public life.

I must stress that most Arab countries don’t enforce gender segregation on anywhere near the scale that Saudi Arabia does. In the majority of the Arab nations the headscarf is not a mandatory requirement and women are both welcome and encouraged to be part of civic life. Saudi Arabia is an outlier even amongst Gulf States, and the behaviour of Saudi tars all her immediate neighbours with the same brush. The other Gulf States have become more sensitive to Western criticism in recent years. Most have put a great deal of time, money and effort into upgrading their institutions and legal systems, though progress is painfully slow at times. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, remains deaf to both internal and external calls for reform.

Saudi Arabia practices the most overt, inhuman and unapologetic form of Apartheid on the face of the contemporary world. In comparison to Apartheid South Africa, the Saudi Kingdom has got off easy, with a fraction of the censure from the International Community very little of which has been official. It is time we started calling Saudi Arabia an Apartheid State and giving it the condemnation it deserves. I look forward to the intense reinvigoration of Anti-Apartheid movements with its ire directed at the Saudi State.

Sara is a journalist, art apprentice, and neo-decadent poet. Follow her on Twitter: @Sayde_Scarlett

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The views expressed in this article are that of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Conservatives for Liberty

Why the socialist resentment of wealth is so wrong

Sara Scarlett / Blog / capitalism, socialism, wealth / 0 comments

07/09/2016

One of the most common world views I’ve come across in my time as an activist is the notion that wealth is a noun. The concept that wealth is something you can physically take from someone who has is it, and give it to someone who does not. This is typically a Left-wing view of wealth, but I never cease to be surprised as to how many on the Right view wealth this way as well. The trouble is that the way the Left views wealth is wrong. Conservatives must stop this habit of kicking the ball around on the Left’s playing field. Wealth is a process. It is a verb, not a noun.

A stock broker, for example, may have more money in his or her bank account than a shop worker. You can tax the stock broker and give it to the shop worker, but next month the stock broker will be rich again and the shop worker will be poor. How much money you have in your bank account is how rich you are. It’s not how wealthy you are. The stock broker is engaged in a process that reaps more monetary rewards. The stock broker does something that not everyone can do, the stock broker assumes huge amounts of risk, and the stock broker works eighty hour weeks. Being a shop worker is tame in comparison. It requires no training, no risk, and the skill-set required to do the job is not rare. The process the stock broker is engaged in is what it means to be wealthy; not his bank balance.

Those on the Left will say that this system isn’t fair and it’s not a meritocracy. The smartest people you know are often not the richest. That’s certainly true in my life. What is also true is that those most engaged in the wealth creation process are those who are the wealthiest and this has nothing to do with intelligence or conscientiousness. I bet if you asked anyone, “What does society need more? Teachers? Or coffee shops?” They would probably say ‘Teachers.’ Why does a Teacher earn less than someone who owns a coffee shop? Having worked behind a coffee shop counter whilst I was a student, I can easily see why.

A coffee shop owner has to lay out a lot more capital up front and continuously in the form of supplies – some of which are perishable, they will hire and train staff, they will rent premises, they will take great lengths to manage their business so it conforms with regulations, and over the course of a working day the business will engage with a greater reach of customers than a Teacher will. Adults of all ages buy coffee and cakes, but parents only use schools for a finite amount of time. Running a small business, however trivial it may seem, is a hard job. Just because professions seem valuable doesn’t mean they are assuming the most risk, engaging with the broadest range of customers, or working the hardest.

Another case in point – Two people are given fifty thousand pounds each. The first puts his fifty thousand pounds in blue chip stock. The second puts his fifty thousand pounds in a savings account. Neither of them have done any “work,” yet the first individual who put his money in stock instead of savings becomes richer. That is because his fifty thousand pounds is more engaged. The fifty thousand pounds invested is used by the companies to generate more value ergo more wealth is created and the Investor receives dividends. The fifty thousand invested is also more at risk and less accessible to the Investor. An outward appearance of “work” is not a good indicator of how an individual has engaged in the process or how much risk an individual has assumed.

Social mobility is stagnating because the Establishment keeps trying to “redistribute” wealth to those on the bottom rungs of society, whilst simultaneously erecting barriers to entry to the wealth creation process. Access to this process should be as easy as possible and does more to help poorer people than any redistribution could ever do. Left wing economic policies rarely help the poor, if ever, and this is why. There are taxes and policies that impede this process more than others. The Left gravitates to excessive regulation, taxation and one-size-fits service models which don’t enable the poorer amongst us access into the wealth creation process. The Minimum Wage is one of the best examples of this.

The Conservatives, however, aren’t stripping back a lot of this nonsense quickly or effectively enough and one of the reasons for that is they too don’t see wealth the right way. This is one of the reasons I’m not sorry to see the back of George Osborne’s chancellorship… Fiscal policies create an economic environment that can hinder or help access to the wealth creation process. If you want an economic environment that helps wealth creation you need low taxes, rule of law, minimal but sound regulations, minimal but sound barriers to entry to many professions, and an transparent, un-onerous tax burden that rewards economic activity rather than economic inactivity with the burden of taxation shifted away from taxing individuals, income and labour.

Do not make the mistake of assuming Socialists are Socialists because they’re less intelligent. The question of wealth is a question of perception, not intelligence. Socialists are wrong because the way they see wealth is wrong. Often, over-intellectualising the question of wealth skews perception, which is why I think so many “professional Intellectuals” are Socialists. This is the challenge for the Conservatives when it comes to engaging with the Left. The challenge for the Conservatives in Government is to make the wealth creation process as uninhibited and as easy to access as possible.

Sara is a journalist, art apprentice, and neo-decadent poet. Follow her on Twitter: @Sayde_Scarlett

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Five reasons the Government must
build more houses

Sara Scarlett / Blog / 5 comments

01/08/2016

I am now well and truly sick of the housing crisis being described as a “bubble.” Housing price inflation is not just due to cheap credit. In the case of the UK housing market, house price inflation is largely due to a literal dearth of houses to live in. Mortgages are cheaper than ever. Houses should be a depreciating asset; the older and more ‘used’ they are the cheaper they should be. New housing is so ugly, so mean in size, and so scarce that older houses are now “character properties” for sale at a huge premium. For some reason people seem to think that the housing market is immune to the laws of supply and demand. Government fiddles with interests rates all you want, introduce ridiculous schemes to subsidise credit like “Help-To-Buy,” and squeeze landlords until they pop, but that won’t solve a problem caused by twenty years worth of missing housing stock. The government must ensure more houses are built, and a lot of them at that.

Here are the five main reasons why any government must remove all impediments to private house building now:

A lack of housing creates the perception that life is getting worse.

Middle class graduates like myself have been left wondering why they cannot afford a home in the modest neighbourhoods their parents could comfortably afford a home in. I’m securely employed and reaching the age where I should be buying a house but I look online at housing in my price range, in the neighbourhood in which my parents own a home in and the choice is painfully thin for miles around. Employed middle class people who would have never had to rely on social housing a generation ago are stuck in it, or worse, in their childhood bedrooms. More pertinently, the homeless, the most vulnerable in our society, risk being pushed further to the edges of our society by a lack of housing. By European standards the UK has a lot of social housing stock. The problem is that people who should not have to rely on it, do.

The perception that I am less well off than my parents is a powerful one. If people can’t even afford the same neighbourhoods they grew up in despite being better educated and employed than their parents, they will start asking questions like, “Why did I bother getting a very expensive degree?” This type of perception matters when it comes to how they vote. In every other sphere of life we are better off than our parents, but not when it comes to housing. Would young people be so in thrall with political “leaders” like Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn if they perceived that their lives were getting better? I think not.

It’s not just communities of houses that are missing; it’s schools, hospitals and clinics, and transport systems that are missing too.

The chronic shortage of houses means the schools, health care facilities, and infrastructure which would have been built along with them don’t exist either. We have a shortage of primary school places because the schools that would have been build with new homes simply aren’t there. We have NHS hospitals and GP clinics which are struggling to cope with their work load. We also have commuter trains packed to dangerous capacities.

Something as simple as a lack of school places should be easy to solve, but twenty years of inaction on housing has seen a simple problem, like school places, become a crisis. Soon it will become a crisis in primary and secondary school places. It is now a struggle to get an appointment at my ordinary suburban GP clinic with the more articulate and pushy middle class people edging out the less able. It’s not fair on existing services to be serving communities that are becoming relentlessly denser and denser in their populations.

The housing crisis is killing off the Traditional Family.

You should be able to buy a family home in the suburbs on a single salary. Both my father and my grandfather bought houses when they already had a child and a housewife to support. Neither of them had degrees. On a single working class salary, my grandfather moved his family off a council estate and into a private home. It was not a particularly impressive home but my grandmother and her two children never wanted for food, clothes, or a roof over their heads. This acquisition of property is effectively what made my family middle class rather than working class. Had my grandfather paid rent all his working life, his widow (my grandmother now in her eighties) would be in a significantly worse position emotionally as well as financially. She would certainly not be sitting secure and comfortable in a chair by the French windows of a house she owns outright.

Single people who are securely employed should have no problem getting a mortgage and having a choice of houses to buy. House price inflation has meant that despite being more impressively educated and employed than their parents, individuals effectively need to be in a relationship and have another salary before getting on the property ladder. If getting a family home relies on two salaries, the option of staying at home with the kids has become a less realistic prospect depriving both women and men of choice. I wasn’t surprised to read this article in the Telegraph, however, emotionally uncomfortable it must be for feminists. Though it proves there are a great deal of women who deeply resent house price inflation as much as I do. Paying childcare fees to another adult – who is only superficially interested in your child – is not a prospect many women look forward to.

Divorce and bereavement have been made even worse.

Watching marriages fall apart is excruciating at the best of times. Unfortunately with the added burden of housing costs we are now seeing the rise of the ‘older renter’. Being forced to split the family home in a divorce at the wrong age now means two people never owning a home of their own again. Houses are just too expensive now. If you’re unlucky enough to lose your partner by death or divorce when you have young children, not being able to afford the mortgage on a single salary means the kids lose a garden to play in as the family gets shunted back into a much smaller rented apartment.

People are stuck on the wrong rung of the housing ladder.

People don’t just move up the housing ladder, they move down too. My mother has been keen on buying a bungalow for some time now. Despite being surrounded by them, they never come up for sale unless someone dies. Due to the lack of bungalows, not only is my mother less appropriately housed than she should be, but there’s a young couple somewhere missing out on a modest family home because of lack of choice further along the housing ladder. About ten years ago bungalows became incredibly unfashionable, however, fashion isn’t the most important factor if you can’t comfortably climb stairs and hovering a large house tires you out for the rest of the day. Starter homes are not the only houses that need to be built. Homes at every level, from bungalows, to affordable terraces, to luxury flats, must be built to appropriately house the population.

Championing house building must be a priority for a Conservative government. Affordable private housing protects the Traditional Family, it protects children, it protects the old, it protects services and social housing from being overburdened; it protects the bereaved and divorced, and it protects the vulnerable who have been rendered homeless by twenty years of bad housing policy. I remain flabbergasted that the issue is still not being taken seriously enough. Rip up the planning framework that is preventing new private housing being built, and build, build, build! The human cost is just too great.

Sara is a journalist, art apprentice, and neo-decadent poet. Follow her on Twitter: @Sayde_Scarlett

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The housing crisis is pure Government failure

Sara Scarlett / Blog / greenbelt, Housing crisis / 1 comment

11/05/2016

It’s only a matter time before the government has no other option but to liberalise planning regulations so that more housing can be built. No amount of minor tinkering around the edges of the problem with policies such as ‘Help To Buy’ will solve the housing crisis. The problems of the UK housing market is not a consequence of foreign buyers or immigration. Even with both of these factors out of the equation there still wouldn’t have been enough housing. Housing is expensive because there is not enough of it. This problem is caused by pure government failure.

For too long, housing policy has been made on a false assumption that we are running out of green space when less than ten per cent of this country is developed, and that figure includes parks and gardens. Initially these regulations were designed to protect the countryside and prevent urban sprawl. The government failure of housing regulation was designed to prevent a future *possible* market failure. This is government regulation that was designed to stop something that hasn’t happened and may never have happened. Instead a real, acute government failure has occurred in the name of fending off an imagined market failure and a whole generation of Britons will suffer because of policy based on a misconception.

Contrary to popular misconception, the UK isn’t short on social housing. By European standards, the UK has a relatively high level of social housing. The problem arises from the fact that unprecedented demand for social housing is from middle and working class people who, a generation ago, would never have had to rely on social housing. A decline in home ownership will eventually have a knock on effect for economic growth as people won’t own homes to use as collateral to get business loans and are already saving and investing less in pension funds. Another adverse effect is that people won’t have a home to sell in order to pay for their care when they reach old age.

The human misery that results from pure policy failure in regards one of our most basic human needs, shelter, is incalculable. My grandfather paid the mortgage and fed and clothed a family of four on a single working class salary. What does it mean for families and relationships, when both parents have to work and commute long hours to afford a mortgage? Everyone in my generation now knows a couple who moved in together when they really shouldn’t have, but were tempted by rising housing costs to do so. This means there’s no choice for men and women who would prefer a traditional family. For children, this means being shuffled from child minder to babysitter and seeing their parents less.

Proponents of the Greenbelt say it is designed to ‘protect the environment,’ however, pushing commuters further into the countryside means more traffic and more emissions not to mention the inconvenience of having to commute for hours upon hours. I predict that eventually one government will be so inundated with the consequences of refusing to tackle the housing crisis, a large housing construction boom will occur all over the Greenbelt just like the post-WWII prefab building program. Building moderately on the Greenbelt now could mean saving it from development you like even less in the future. Although, prefabs are nicer these days.

In every other way, our lives are so much better than our parents, but because housing is such a fundamental need, the housing crisis has impeded our ability to enjoy our unprecedented consumer choice and freedom. Where would we be without government nobly stepping in to save us from the horrors of urban sprawl? If you’re in your late 20s and 30s, the answer is: ‘more likely to be living in a comfortable suburban home you own

Sara is a journalist, art apprentice, and neo-decadent poet. Follow her on Twitter: @Sayde_Scarlett

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The views expressed in this article are that of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Conservatives for Liberty

Your good intentions are not enough

Sara Scarlett / Blog / 0 comments

06/04/2016

In this recent post by Ben Harris, he aptly describes a insidious culture in which after a problem is identified “something must done” regardless of what that something is. To object to what is being done is tantamount to sanctioning the existence of the problem or denying the problem exists. This is exactly the type of thinking that creates bad policy, and once that policy is enacted and the consequences of the policy are shown to be harmful, the policy persists rather than being repealed. Often the reason bad policy stays in place is because of an emotional attachment to what the policy ‘means’ rather than what the policy ‘does.’ This type of thinking has lead to some of the worst of British policy making and I wanted to highlight a few of the most entrenched examples.

Foreign Aid – There is almost nil empirical evidence of the effectiveness of Foreign Aid. There is a great swathe of evidence demonstrating its misuse. Yet still, it not only persists, but is a popular policy because to suggest removing it is tantamount to advocating the continuation of third world poverty. What this policy means is more important than what it actually does for the third world poor.

The NHS – Are there more effective health care systems? Yes, most of the developed European countries have a better health care system now. Furthermore, the other ‘Beveridge’ models in Europe, like the NHS, underperform the ‘Bismarckian’ models by a significant degree. Not only do ‘Bismarckian’ models provide better health care, they provide it in a universal sense. The NHS can be charitably described as a second rate health care system. Yet, in face of this empirical evidence, the NHS still maintains cult-like support. It is as though its supporters think that the only options are ‘the American system,’ or ‘wanting poor people to die’ (something that someone actually said to me) – this is not ignorance; it is denial.

Comprehensive Schools – Whenever some social commentator wants to highlight inequality in education, somewhat inevitably the focus is always on how to make private schools more like comprehensives. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Private schools do exactly what the people paying for them e.g. the parents, want them to. Why get rid of the only part of the education system that is working exactly as it should for the people who pay for it? Comprehensives mean equality, so that trumps all objective measures of how they perform. The fact that they are largely inferior to private schools, and radically unequal owning to the fact that rich parents monopolise housing in good school catchment areas, becomes completely irrelevant. Damn the children who have to go to them, some policy maker somewhere means well.

The Greenbelt – The Greenbelt is one of the most appalling policies ever enacted. It is the reason for the housing crisis right now. Yet, despite a chronic undersupply of housing, and the fact that less than 10 per cent of England is ‘developed’ (some of that is gardens and parks), the Greenbelt is championed as an environmental necessity, else we all succumb to the dark satanic mills. Considering how little of England is developed, support for the Greenbelt is irrational. I would be horrified if they paved over the New Forest or Snowdonia National Park, but a field adjacent to the M25 is just not the same thing. It’s a policy based on a misconception rather than reality. How inhumane do you have to be to prefer that people go homeless rather than build on a ordinary green field? It’s actually barbaric but, hey, England’s green and pleasant lands…

Drug Prohibition – I don’t do drugs, I don’t like drugs, I don’t want anybody anywhere to be addicted to drugs. Yet, I still support the decriminalisation of drugs. I am so tired of people characterising my policy position as tantamount to an endorsement of people ruining their lives with drugs. Supporting drug prohibition means you disapprove of drugs. Good for you… The empirical evidence shows that drug prohibition makes it no harder to get drugs, but instead gives the whip hand of an entire market over to the drug traffickers and has serious knock on consequences for rule of law. This applies to most ‘sin taxes’ and ‘sindustry’ regulation, but, hey, ones moral disapproval is all that matters, right? Nope.

What all these policies have in common is a strong emotional appeal and a profound paucity of empirical evidence demonstrating their superiority or effectiveness. All these policies enjoy huge popularity for emotional rather than rational reasons, but as the effects of these policies show, meaning well is not quite the same as doing good. They are the perfect policies for a shallow, empty virtue-signalling culture in denial about the consequences of their actions. The reason I would get rid of all the aforementioned policies, as well as a great many more, is because I do care about the poor, the sick, the under-educated, the homeless, and the addicted, and I don’t care about how good your intentions are.

Sara is a journalist, art apprentice, and neo-decadent poet. Follow her on Twitter: @Sayde_Scarlett

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Cotton-wool kids become ‘safe space’ adults

Sara Scarlett / Blog / 1 comment

26/03/2016

I enjoyed Sam Hooper’s piece about the increasingly aggressive phenomenon of ‘safe space’ students. I think there is value in exploring where this social attitude came from in further detail.

I believe that the recent desire of students to turn the adult world into their personal comfort zone is a direct consequence of a school system that over emphasises left- wing values. The ‘no one should ever lose’ mentality must be eradicated from schools in order to combat this insidious social attitude and create resilient adults.

One of the main fallacies I hear from those of a left-wing persuasion is the fact that competition means ‘someone loses.’ Obviously this is true, if a company makes an inferior product, and another company makes a better product, the former company receives less sales ergo profit and can be said to have lost. The latter company, who produced a better product, is said to have ‘won’ and that’s bad because someone else (the purveyor of shoddy products) is put out of business. Left-wingers don’t see this as a good but people who believe in markets are okay with this. This is how markets are meant to work and usually left-wing commentators forget that the consumer also always ‘wins’ too, by being able to purchase a superior/better value product.

This thinking has permeated the education system for decades. For years, children have been artificially insulated from any form of loss or emotional upset. The common practice of everyone getting a prize for taking part in sports regardless of how good they are, or how much effort they have put in. The reasoning being that no one’s feelings should get hurt. Whilst I appreciate that adults want their children to have happy childhoods, this has been taken way too far. It is not just the job of parents and educators to make children’s lives as happy as possible. It is the job of parents and educators to make their children into adults who can thrive in the adult world.

The rise of students who cannot exist outside of a ‘safe space’ shows that parents and educators have failed in many respects. Children should be exposed to competition and tests, offered incentives for doing well in them and working hard because that builds resilient adults who are ready for a world where not everyone gets a part in a blockbuster movie or a book deal. In trying to create a world where children are never subjected to rejection or losing, they are unprepared for an adult world where so much of life is about how you deal with rejection, loss, grief and disappointment and avoiding it is impossible. This is, after all, precisely what school is for; a place to fail when the stakes are low.

Left-wing anti-competition dogma, may very well remove mild temporary stress from children’s lives but it also robs them of the chance to develop the vital resilience they need to navigate the adult world. What is a job interview if not a competition? There’s no second or third place, there’s the person who gets the job – the winner – and everyone else is a loser with no prizes for taking part and often, no explanation for why you lost. This anti-competition attitude, which is pervasive in schools, prepares children for the world their parents and teachers wish existed rather than the world as it is.

Is it any wonder then that these students, now university aged, want to turn the adult world into an extension of their own personal comfort zones? We shouldn’t be surprised that students are shallow, virtue signalling social justice warriors who are threatened by any view that challenges their own. This is exactly the type of student conventional left-wing educationalists always wanted and it is tragic. But don’t worry! When they are no longer cushioned by their student unions, these individuals are in for a short, sharp shock of entering the adult world and it’ll do them a world of good.

Sara is a journalist, art apprentice, and neo-decadent poet. Follow her on Twitter: @Sayde_Scarlett

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A Marriage Certificate is not just a piece of paper

Sara Scarlett / Blog / 0 comments

12/03/2016

By Sara Scarlett

Recently, I have come across a new tendency amongst people my age of a libertarian/anti-state persuasion; the shunning of Marriage. It is dismissed simply because it’s ‘just a piece of paper.’ Some of you may have heard something similar to the following: “We don’t need a piece of paper – our love is pure!” Yes, that’s right, the belief that love is all unicorns, fairies and angel farts… I get it. Good for you! Now, let me explain to you how wrong you are…

A Marriage certificate is not just a piece of paper. It is a contract; and contracts are important. Things like Marriage certificates and Wills are some of the few times in our lives we get to explicitly sign a social contract with the State; however, inadequate they may appear to be. In exchange for signing the contract, certain rights, privileges and obligations are granted from the State.

There are lots of other arguments in favour of Marriage on the basis that Marriage affects the quality of the relationship, more likely to last, etc., but this article is deliberately not concerned with those.

The most valuable thing Marriage and civil partnerships do from a legal standpoint is make you unambiguously related to your partner in the eyes of the law. Governments are big, fat and stupid so unless you have a piece of paper saying you are married to your partner, as far as your Government is concerned you are two unrelated adults.

In recent years there have been calls for the rules to be changed to acknowledge the condition of Cohabitation. Obligations regarding ‘Cohabitation’ are often only applied when there are children under the age of eighteen involved. Once those children become adults, you and your partner effectively go back to being unrelated adults again. That’s how the State treats you if one of you dies prematurely, regardless of how many children you’ve raised together, or how many years you’ve lived together, or how much you loved each other.

I don’t think these laws will ever be changed because Cohabitation is too ambiguous. Oh well, I lived with him for two years and we have a kid, but I lived with him for five years and I loved him more… What? If only there was some sort of contract couples could sign to make their relationship completely unambiguous…

Also, there is no such thing as a ‘Common-law wife/husband/spouse.’ I’m amazed at how many people think that it exists. It’s effectively a polite term for ‘living in sin.’

In the Gay Marriage debate, I found myself rather surprised that no one was actually arguing that Homosexuals should have Marriage because Marriage is good. The main thrust of the debate from ‘liberals’ was about getting the State to acknowledge and sanction Homosexual relationships (despite the fact that when Heterosexuals do it, it’s a caustic patriarchal institution – but that is an article for another day…). I was pro-Gay Marriage because, since Marriage is actually a really, really good and useful contract, it’s blatantly unequal that Homosexual partners should not be allowed to have the privileges of a Marriage contract.

Rather than being a collusion with the State and it’s sanctioned institutions, Marriage acts as a barrier between you and the State. If you die without a Marriage certificate and/or a Will, it is the State who decides what happens to your worldly possessions, your estate, your pension, or even your body. Your partner will probably not be included in those decisions: why leave that up to chance? In a world with so much uncertainly, why shun a tool that provides some measure of certainty?

As you may have guessed by now I’m a fan of Marriage, although I do acknowledge it’s not perfect. What makes the Marriage contract inadequate in many ways is, not it’s relationship with the State but, the fact that it doesn’t resemble a private contract enough.

Marriage is not ‘just a piece of paper,’ it is an exceptionally useful and valuable public contract. Dismiss it as ‘just a piece of paper’ at your peril!

Sara is a journalist, art apprentice, and neo-decadent poet. Follow her on Twitter: @Sayde_Scarlett

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The views expressed in this article are that of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Conservatives for Liberty

About Sara Scarlett

Posts by :

Saudi Arabia is an apartheid state

Why the socialist resentment of wealth is so wrong

Five reasons the Government must build more houses

The housing crisis is pure Government failure

Your good intentions are not enough

Cotton-wool kids become ‘safe space’ adults

A Marriage Certificate is not just a piece of paper

Five reasons the Government must
build more houses