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8 October 2012 Last updated at 13:06 ET By Brian Wheeler Political reporter, BBC News in Birmingham

David Cameron could only dream of this sort of fervour when he delivers his big conference speech on Wednesday.

But it would have been a very different kind of atmosphere had the Conservative leader dared to venture into Birmingham Town Hall on Monday lunchtime.

Mr Cameron has angered a swathe of his party with his commitment to legalising gay marriage.

And a significant number of them – about 1,000 in total – ran the gauntlet of protesters outside the venue to voice their anger, dismay and, in many cases, sheer incomprehension at his stance.

The fringe event – normally sedate affairs, with bored activists picking over sandwiches – felt more like a revivalist meeting. They shouted, they cheered. They cried out “Amen”.

It fell to Ann Widdecombe to put into words what they were feeling – in particular their anger at being labelled “bigots” by those campaigning for the legalisation of gay marriage.

“Is it bigoted to recognise that the complementarity of a man and a woman in a union open to procreation is unique and cannot be replicated by other unions?” she asked, to cheers.

“The real bigots, those who really deserve to be described as such, the real extremists, the real nasties, are those who believe that those who dissent from their views have no right to do so and that the state itself should silence them.”

She poured scorn on the idea that the words “husband” and “wife” could be replaced in official documents by terms such as “partner” or “progenitor”.

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Tory members' gay marriage anger