As I recounted here on February 9, the drive to get same-sex marriage into law was masterminded from 2010 onwards by an alliance between Theresa May, the Conservative Home Secretary, Lynne Featherstone, the Lib Dem equalities minister, and gay pressure groups, led by one called Equal Love. They pushed the issue forward, not in Westminster, but through the Council of Europe, culminating in March last year with a day-long “secret conference” chaired by Miss Featherstone in Strasbourg. With the public excluded for the first time in the Council’s history, it was here that – with the active support of Sir Nicolas Bratza, the British president of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) – a deadline was set for their planned coup of June 2013. If, by this date, “several countries” had managed to put gay marriage into law, Sir Nicolas pledged that his court would then declare same-sex marriage to be a Europe-wide human right. Hence the recent rush for several countries to oblige, including France, where gay marriage has brought thousands of protesters out on to the streets. And hence last Tuesday’s unprecedented revolt in the House of Commons, when 133 Tories voted against their government.