Steve, do you not believe that dissenting views should get a fair hearing?

Yep. And they're getting it. There is plenty of scope for open debate on all manner of platforms, including this one. I think your problem is that there is nothing like the groundswell of opinion against gay marriage that you seem to think there is. I've scarcely heard anything at all except from a few out-of-touch churchmen and the odd Tory MP from Backwoodshire.

Do you deny that it is unusual for an issue to be raised from nowhere and legislated for within a single Parliament?

From nowhere? You mean it wasn't in a manifesto somewhere? Blimey, if we held every party strictly to its manifesto we wouldn't half be having fun here, wouldn't we! As long as proper parliamentary procedure is followed (and this is hardly being played out in private either, is it), there's nothing wrong. Gay marriage is a big change, but so was abolishing hanging and allowing abortion and cutting the tax rate for millionaires. You have to do these things in one go on the whole, not drag them out. You can hardly complain that equality for gay people in general, and gay marriage in particular, has suddenly come out of the blue. Let's get on with it!

After millennia, why the unseemly rush given the deeply held convictions that people have?

After millennia of what? Your kind of marriage tradition out of all the hundreds of marriage traditions the world over?