"I cannot accept this amendment"

So, yesterday saw the report stage of the Same Sex Marriage bil.

As the original bill had many issues for trans people, there were some amendments proposed to try and rectify these and make the bill a lot fairer in general, with an amazing speech from Julian Huppert.

Sadly, all of this was in vain, and at the end of this, Helen Grant, under secretary equalities minister emitted a long string of "I cannot accept this amendment" with seemingly poor excuses. With this, the bill has reached its 3rd reading and has been submitted to the House of Lords complete with all its flaws:

1. Forcibly annulled marriages won't be reinstated.
2. Uncontactable or malicious (opposite sex) spouses will have a veto over a person's GRC/transition. Same sex spouses won't be able to.
3. No opposite sex civil partnerships (guess why it's not actually titled "Equal marriage").
4. Converting current civil partnerships to a marriage on GRC/transition of one partner still requires enforced annulment.

The worst thing? There is pretty much fuck all we can do now to get it changed without vetoing the entire bill.

There is a very good analysis by Helen Belcher.