Ex-Telegraph editor: David Cameron was ‘wounded politically’ by same-sex marriage

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Charles Moore, former editor of The Daily Telegraph, has blamed the rise of UKIP among traditionally Conservative voters, in part, on David Cameron’s backing of same-sex marriage.

Writing in the newspaper, he said the main parties have confused modern values with “virtue” and claims that despite the progress of gay rights, and growing acceptance of same-sex marriage all over the world, that does not mean it is right or inevitable.

The biographer of Margaret Thatcher, who converted to Catholicism over the ordination of women, cites Soviet Communism as an example of previously “modern values” that were abandoned, before immediately going on to discuss same-sex marriage.

“Mr Cameron casually imposed gay marriage. His approach insulted settled beliefs, and therefore wounded him politically more than people like to state directly,” Moore wrote.

He also describes socially conservative views, such as disagreeing with same-sex marriage, as “age-old, universal”, and “reassuring”.

Previously in a column in May 2013, Moore suggested same-marriage would “alter fundamentally the most important social structure ever known to mankind,” and the rejection of same-sex marriage was the value of “every mainstream religion, thousands of years of history and the almost uniform practice of every civilisation”.

In the same article he said same-sex marriage could lead to incest and same-sex marriages between “heterosexual bachelor chums” and that “homosexual acts have no existential purpose”.