There is a dangerous piece of rhetoric floating around, increasingly popular with politicians, which says the government should forget gay marriage and concentrate on "the things that really matter".

Defence secretary Philip Hammond is the latest to thump this tub, explaining: "Clearly [gay marriage] is not the number one priority. If you stop people in the street and ask them what their concerns are, they'll talk to you about jobs and economic growth… The government has got to show that it is focused on the things that really matter."

Personally, I never stop people in the street and ask them what their concerns are. I don't know if Philip Hammond does. If so, perhaps this flawed reasoning extends nationwide. Or he's only stopping people in Downing Street.

George Osborne said something nearly identical the week before; that gay marriage is "not a priority of the government" because the government is "focused on the really important issues that matter to people".

Mr Osborne said that he personally is in favour of gay marriage. What a perfect position he finds himself in, politically: pleasing supporters of same-sex matrimony with his own endorsement, while reassuring opponents that the government's not seriously considering it.

Those in his party who are revolted by gay marriage use the same handy argument, that there are "more important things to think about". It's a clever way to reject the issue without screaming: "Ugh, two men at the altar! Probably wearing dresses! And with big moustaches! Big moustaches and dresses at the same time! That reminds me, I must ring my mother."

They know better than to reveal the full terrifying vision of social collapse that a gay wedding triggers in their minds: a church full of crop-haired anarchists, most of them speaking foreign languages; teenagers snorting heroin off the altar, most of them on Facebook; women publicly breastfeeding in the pews, most of them bishops; two newlywed drag queens high-fiving as a vicar in hotpants says: "You may now fist the bride."

No: far better just to say they're more interested in the economy.

I don't mean to suggest that my own first reaction to the idea of gay marriage was free from nerves, uncertainty or reflex stereotyping. But, as with most things, my immediate conservative instincts fell away with a bit of proper thought. I won't explain why I'm now in favour, because that isn't the point. I have my opinions and you'll have yours; my worry is the argument, whether you support change or not, that it's "less important" than the economy.

Please let's not nod along with this idea until it feels like a truism. It's a dangerous way of thinking. It may even be that kind of thinking that got "us" into economic trouble in the first place.

The economy in this country – the basic, central core of what an economy is – is extremely healthy. We have an abundant climate, hardy British labour for building and farming and crafting, and brilliant inventive minds at work. If those gambling international speculators, who create nothing and build nothing, with their massive fantasy "derivatives market" and their mind-blowing "trillions of debt", all disappeared tomorrow, we'd still have an economy. We might not have flat-screen TVs with 200 channels – and City traders might not have private jets – but we'd still have food and coal and tables and new ideas. Greece is about to default on its debt and opt out of the whole mad lending scheme; perhaps we'll watch that country invent democracy for the second time.

We'd also still have love. Stripped of our credit cards, our electronic goods, our super-fast broadband, our international travel – and even of our welfare system based on cash and paperwork rather than simple sharing – we'd still have men and women, and men and men, and women and women, who felt joy and safety and hope, making promises and planning futures, because of this free and powerful human instinct alone.

The stark revelation, a few years ago, that all of the numbers on all of the screens meant nothing, that there was no gold, that it was all debt, that the emperor had no clothes, made us feel terrified and powerless. It's too much to confront directly, like staring at the sun: the realisation that it's merely empty digits on a screen that entitle some people to helipads and swimming pools, others to dying on a trolley in a hospital corridor.

We know now, but we can't seem to change it. The more powerless we feel, the closer we huddle to what we can control: our own promises, to our own loved ones. Those tiny, enormous, emotional contracts between one person and another.

If a historically marginalised group of us want to make those contracts formal, in the sight of God, the way it has been done by the majority for thousands of years, how dare anyone say this is "less important" than money? Stand against it if you will, but don't dismiss it as trivial.

Thoreau wrote, in 1863: "If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I think there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business."

I have a new daydream, of a parallel world, where our democratic leaders say: "We'll do our best for economic growth, but our priority is to concentrate on the things that really matter to people."

