Thatcher biographer Charles Moore: Gay marriage is a fad like asbestos

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Former Telegraph Editor and Margaret Thatcher biographer Charles Moore has written a column saying same-sex marriage is a “trend” like “asbestos”.

Mr Moore, who was formerly the Editor of the Spectator, wrote a column for the publication titled ‘Is gay marriage just a fad?’.

In it, he says those who oppose same-sex marriage will look “like people who supported the slave trade”, now that Ireland has overwhelmingly passed same-sex marriage in a referendum.

Saying same-sex marriage was like ideas that look “like the future for a bit, but then run out of steam”, he compared same-sex marriage to “asbestos”, “communism”, and “high-rise housing”.

Going on, he said an “obsession with gay rights and identity, and especially with homosexual marriage, seems to be characteristic of societies with low birth rates and declining global importance.”

He also says “rising societies with growing populations see marriage as the key to the future of humanity”, and that those societies “think it is between a man and a woman”.

Concluding, he writes: “Only when countries like India, Nigeria or Egypt introduce same-sex marriage will I retract the above.”

He has been criticised for the column on social media, including by Tim Montgomery, a columnist for the Times, who tweeted: “Oh dear. Gay marriage isn’t a ‘fad’.”

Mr Moore last year blamed the rise of UKIP among traditionally Conservative voters, in part, on David Cameron’s backing of same-sex marriage.

In March he complained that “traditional views” are being drowned out by “a form of gay rights sharia”.