One thing that I have never really ever understood is why, when vegetarians make food, they often make food in the shape of hamburgers or sausages. Surely when there is free rein to arrange your lentils and chick peas in any order you wish, then something far removed from the meat eaters is preferable, at least in name if it not necessarily in shape.

Each to their own of course but I have something of a similar outlook when it comes to the potential contradiction in terms that is ‘gay marriage’. Is it necessary for civil partnerships to converge entirely towards straight marriages? If there is a difference, should that difference be recognised in the nomenclature?

The furore around John Mason’s recent motion was a different issue, that was the seemingly non-existent threat of priests being ‘forced’ to run services for couples of the same sex. A potential next issue is the wording of any law and whether the phrase ‘gay marriage’ should be on any Bill or Law that comes into force. That is perhaps a question for linguists and I daresay someone like Stephen Fry is the best placed to define what the meaning of ‘marriage’ actually is, historic and currently. I personally have certainly always taken it as meaning the coming together of a man and a woman in matrimony, holy or otherwise. I note from headlines that Alex Salmond takes a different view and I do wonder how David Cameron and the majority of the Tory benches see it, quite possibly central to how inflammatory the debate may be.

Do words change over time? Should they? I guess they do for some and don’t for others, with me personally being in the former category but not all thinking any less of those in the latter. Of course, marriage may always have included the meaning of two people promising their lives to each other, it’s just been suppressed, often brutally, for centuries.

Nonetheless, views are what they are, as frustrating as they can be for some. If a man was to suddenly insist that people called him a woman (without any transgender operations having taken place), then that would be patently absurd, surely? However, if a significant number of people have a fixed view that marriage, the meaning of the word marriage, is a man and a woman agreeing to be together for the rest of their lives, then the same absurdity can be understood from their perspective, if you’re generous enough to see it.

Of course, an argument for widening the definition of marriage, if that is even needed in the first place, is that it is clear what the meaning is. Two guys saying they got married doesn’t need any further explanation, two guys saying they have just had a civil ceremony usually does. (Does a civil partnership come with the same rights as a heterosexual marriage? It should do but I don’t know. A gay marriage, of course, would, or, again, at least should.)

I do worry that it will be in Scotland that this argument will surface first. If Alex Salmond can imagine marriage to mean the coming together of any two people for the rest of their lives and the church is inflexible in its view that marriage can only involve a man and a woman, by definition, then I don’t really know what happens next and it is clear from recent press that the church intends to make a big stink about this.

So, to avoid any verbal bricks that may be coming my way, I insist that I have no problem with looking at marriage in a different light as time goes on (veggie burgers too for that matter) but a debate around the meaning of a certain word is probably just around the corner and that’s worth thinking about.