Reality is so much worse and so much better than advertised in the brochure.

It is forty years since any human looked up at Earth from the surface of the Moon and yet we are exploring the solar system and beyond, with automated probes dancing around the planets and near-autonomous robots poking around Martian rocks with an electro-nasal-trowel and a laser. We are an overpopulated planet greedy for moar of all the things and starting to pay the environmental price, and yet we can be in touch with (almost) anyone, (almost) anywhere, (almost) anytime, in ways that would astound and bemuse even our younger selves, let alone our candlelit, sheet-draped ancestors.

Some governments around the world still try to suppress or deny or punish homosexuality in every possible way, often with the tacit or active support of some religions. And yet other countries are hurtling along the motorway to full or near-full equality. Not altogether painlessly, it must be said. The equality wagon is moving at a hefty clip, but one wheel does have an alarming wobble and the windscreen wipers are scraping dry smears into the driver’s eye line.

And that’s why here in the UK we’re apparently heading for a classic British fudge over equal marriage. Worse than true equality, better than being mugged by a gang of rabid vicars.

If the bill passes as proposed, it’ll be a hodge-podge of opt-ins, quadruple locks and placatory flannel, ensuring — in fact, enshrining in law — that same-sex couples may be discriminated against by entire faiths or by individuals, in a kind of à la carte smorgasbigotry.

It’s a funny kind of equality.

But hey, we should be grateful, I suppose. In the UK every mile travelled in the last twenty years has been in the same direction: forward. The wagon lost its reverse gear just after Section 28.

This assumes, of course, that the bill passes. It looks certain to succeed in the House of Commons, despite the legions of Tory MPs trying to hurl javelins into the spokes. The House of Lords may prove a more formidable opponent, containing as it does not only older, traditionally more small-c conservative types, but also twenty-six bishops in the Church of England, who by gracious virtue of fudges passim still have a place in the legislature. The Lords Spiritual and Lords Temporal together might yet conspire to erect a diversion, like Wile E Coyote with an ACME hole-in-a-wall sticker, which our careering equality wagon might or might not successfully navigate unflattened.

Let’s assume the bill passes. What then?

It is surely inevitable that, one by one, the religious cul-de-sacs and chicanes will disappear in a series of highly contentious roadworks over years, perhaps decades. Some churches might even split into factions — it would hardly be unprecedented. The Church of England itself might schism, over this issue and women bishops, which gives me the excuse to chuck the word disestablishmentarianism into the blog as if I know what I’m talking about. In truth I cannot see the wagon stopping now, or U-turning — at least in the UK.

What’s also inevitable is that as homosexuality continues to become increasingly normalised in society — marriage being one of the last great gated communities closed to the equality wagon — then the final taboos become even more unsustainable. You never know: we might even see that most rare of creatures, an out gay footballer at the top of the game.

And on that subject I will have more to say…