The Honourable Member for Pepynbridge

Ralph Waters, a successful, wealthy and gay Queen’s Counsel and, since May 2015, the elected Conservative Member of Parliament for the constituency of Pepynbridge Forest, spends most weekends in a rented cottage in the village of Pepynbridge, accompanied by his much younger partner, Pascal Legrand, a retired black African Top 14 French rugby union player. Ralph and Pascal’s request that Herbert Onion, Rector of Pepynbridge, should conduct their marriage in St Aidan’s Abbey and the knowledge that Ralph is promoting a Private Members’ Bill in Parliament to force the Church of England to permit same-gender marriage in church, unleash controversy in the village and further afield that challenges long-held assumptions about homosexuality and entrenched attitudes towards same-gender marriage; and puts at risk not only a livelihood, but a life as well.