According to opponents of the new law, once gays can get married, that cheapens the marriages of everyone who isn’t gay. This shows how powerful a gay wedding is, because no other marriages have been able to ruin everyone else’s like this. No one suggested that marriage was cheapened because Fred and Rose West were married, because, while their marriage was unconventional in certain respects, at least it was a union between man and woman, and that’s the main thing.

Similarly, Hitler and Eva Braun’s marriage didn’t lessen the sanctity of heterosexual blessings, because whatever else, their ceremony in the bunker was healthy and natural and not all icky and weird.

But now gays can get married, the offices at Relate will be bursting. Couples will have to be seen six at a time to fit them all in. “Our marriage seems pointless now,” they’ll whimper. “Now gays can get married, we spend every evening shooting each other with air rifles and we’ve put our kids into care.”

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This is the latest of a long line of things we can no longer enjoy because gays are allowed to do them as well. Since homosexuality was legalised in 1967, hardly anyone has bothered to have heterosexual sex, as it’s been cheapened. And these days why should a married couple bother buying toothpaste, or food, when lesbians can legally buy them as well?

For some, it’s even more serious. Tory councillor James Malliff said if we legalise gay marriage “we may as well legalise marriage with animals”. Because would any of us react differently to either of the following statements: a) “I’m Brian, and this is my husband, Kevin” or b) “I’m Brian, and this is my husband. I keep him in a matchbox because he’s a wasp.”

Several MPs opposed to gay marriage asked, “Where will this lead next?” They should have a competition to see who can go the furthest, with Edward Leigh yelling: “Then we’ll be allowed to marry a stick of rock, which will get jealous if it suspects the man has chewed a liquorice allsort, then the man will notice the rock has ‘I want a divorce’ written all through it, and it will move out to live in a tin on housing benefit which the taxpayer pays for, and if we refuse we’ll be taken to the European Court of Confectionary Rights.”

James Malliff can trump him by pointing out that next we’ll be allowed to marry attitudes, so a man will marry wistfulness, but if the owners of a bed and breakfast turn the couple away because their religion considers it a sin to be wistful, THEY’LL be the ones put in jail in these days of political correctness. Gerald Howarth opposed the bill, claiming it’s a result of the “aggressive homosexual community”. And you can see his point, because look at the aggression in society, and who’s always at the heart of it – homosexuals. Football crowds chant “the colour co-ordinations on your away strip are shit, and you know they are”, then it all kicks off.

And there’s no greater sign of a community behaving aggressively than when it asks to be allowed to get married. That’s what happened to the Vikings. They were peaceful at first, then they were allowed to get married, and it was just pillage, pillage, pillage. So you’ll want to keep clear of these aggressive homosexual weddings, which will go, “Do you take this man to be your lawful wedded spouse”? “Of COURSE, I do you arsehole. Shut it, vicar. Now listen you witnesses, if just one flake of confetti lands on my blond highlights I’ll cut yer.”

John Stanley, MP for Tonbridge, said gay marriage will be “unhelpful to young people being attracted to others of the same sex before arriving at being heterosexual”. Because it’s been such a help, over the years, to young people attracted to others of the same sex, to know they can’t marry the person they’re attracted to. Many people, in an even more dedicated effort to help, have called these young people perverts and spat at them and insisted they’ll go to hell, so that they can arrive at being heterosexual, enjoying a proper wedding with someone of the opposite sex who they’re not really attracted to, which always ensures a long, healthy and uncheapened marriage.

The idea that we need laws to discourage people from being gay suggests that opponents of gay marriage aren’t confident about heterosexuality being “natural” at all. Because they seem to assume that once the law’s changed, straight people will think “Now gay weddings are legal I might as well be gay”. Because our sexuality is shaped, above all, by what’s legal. Make it legal to marry furniture and we’ll all be rubbing ourselves up and down the sideboard, and downloading hardcore copies of The Antiques Roadshow.

The complaints also suggest that where the Labour Party did undergo a genuine transformation, during which the beliefs it was founded on were largely discarded, the Conservative Party remains, at heart, unchanged, wedded to values immeasurably more dated than anything offered by the trade unions.

And you can understand why, because whenever one of these couples who’ve been together for 60 years are asked for their secret to a long and happy marriage, they say: “The main thing that’s kept us together is knowing that gays aren’t allowed to do it, isn’t it, dear?”

“Yes, dear. We’ve had our ups and downs but, even in the rocky times, knowing that gays can’t marry each other has seen us through. I’ll put the kettle on.”