Skip to main content

Equal Love


I'm glad that there's now a proper campaign in Britain for same-sex marriage: Equal Love.

Living in Massachusetts in 2004 when same-sex marriage came in there I've been impatient to see people fighting for it in the UK.

I'm not sure however, about the part of the campaign to allow civil partnerships to be open to different-sex couples. It is logical I suppose. But I've always viewed civil parnterships as an insufficent step towards marriage, and if marriage is available to everyone, then why would anyone want a civil partnership?

Also, where does this leave our campaign for allowing civil partnerships to be conducted in places of worship? Surely this will now become irrelevant, if we can perform same-sex marriages? Or do we still want to perform civil partnerships? If so what exactly is "civil" about them if they are, religious? Surely if they're allowed for all couples the defining characteristic of civil partnerships will be that they would be non-religious?

Also, what will be the process of a civil partnership converting to a marriage? Or vice versa?

You see the reason I was never in favour of civil partnerships wasn't just because they're not good enough, not equality. It's also because they make things unneccesarily complicated. I've always thought it was more logical, simple and fair to open civil marriage to all couples, allowing religious groups to define for themselves who they want to marry.

Anyway despite all these complications it's good to see the campagin for same sex marriage finally get underway in the UK. It's about time!

Comments

Anonymous said…
Let's keep some hold on the meaning of words ! Marriage for the covenanted union of a man and a woman,whether in church or elsewhere ;civil partnership for other forms of relationship - why shouldn't a man who has cared for his mentally disabled sister for many years ( a situation known to me personally )be able to have his commitment honoured and respected under the law/by a religious body every bit as much as two gays ?
4:32 pm
ian said…
Interesting how the above comment is Anonymous! I guess its encouraging that folks who want to keep marriage for straight folks need to post anonymously.

I think having a two tier law is problematic, yes. Either make marriage universal or make civil partnership the de-facto.

My personal preference would be to see government get out of the marriage business all together. Make civil partnership a legal contract between two people conferring a particular set of legal rights and responsibilities. Then marriage is purely a social or religious thing. I know some evangelical Christians who think that anyway, that government marriage is nothing of the sort, that the only marriage is marriage in church (even if, as was, the church they attend can't conduct legal marriages).

Civil partnerships, as a legal contract, should then be open to a much larger range of people. Including family members (as the famous case of the aged spinster sisters made clear). Different denominations of church would be free to be as bigoted as they like with the definition of marriage, under the firm understanding that whatever they thought about it, it made not a jot of difference.
5:56 pm
Anonymous said…
Ian chides me for posting anonymously but on inspecting his w/site,I find nothing that reveals his identity either ;what's the problem ?
6:25 pm
Stephen Lingwood said…
On the "traditional definition" of marriage, please see this article: http://archielevine.blogspot.com/2008/11/traditional-marriage-perverts-tradition.html
10:17 am
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Swords into Ploughshares

  "They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." Isaiah 2:4 Palestine Action are doing just this: beating swords into ploughshares i.e. putting weapons out of use. In doing so they are fulfilling this biblical mandate. They are expressing God's peace as expressed in the Jewish tradition and the Christian tradition. God desires that our swords shall be beaten into ploughshares, that we should unlearn war. That the government wants to make this action illegal has to be confronted in the strongest terms. To rush to condemn attacks on weapons but not attacks on children is perverse. To call attacks on weapons terrorism but not attacks on children is perverse. When government comes to such an extreme position - legislating that peace is war, that weapons need more protection than children - then they have fundamentally gone wrong. This is the definitio...
Post a Comment
Read more

Art Lester

  I've just heard the extremely sad and shocking news of the death of Unitarian Minister Art Lester. It shocked me even more as I was emailing him a few days ago as he spontaneously emailed me thanking me for my book and offering to send me a copy of his latest one (pictured above).  I already feel like I've missed the opportunity to get to know him better, as he's the kind of person I would really have liked to have been a mentor as he always seemed wise and spiritually rooted, in a mischievous, not-taking-himself-too-seriously way (which is a good sign of spiritual maturity I think).  He ended his email with, "I attach a portion of a sermon I’ll be giving at the Paris Fellowship next month.  It’s my 29th service over the past 27 years and possibly my last.  I wouldn’t normally bore a colleague with my scribbles, but I think you might like this one."  I do. I do like this one. And as he now won't deliver this at Paris Fellowship I thought it was worth shar...
1 comment
Read more

Is humanism theologically tolerant?

OK, well this might be controversial, but I feel the need to say it. Is humanist tolerant? Please note I'm not asking about humanism within society. Clearly humanism certainly believes in tolerance within society and I'm forever glad they are often the only people in the media calling for a separation of church and state. No, what I'm talking about is descriptions of Unitarianism like this and adverts like this , discussed at Peacebang here , which say that humanism is one option, Christianity is another, God is one option among many. The trouble is, humanism, by definition is theologically opposed to theism. This is very different from the relationship between Christianity and Buddhism. These two traditions may be vastly different, but Buddhism, by definition , is not opposed to Christianity, and Christianity, by definition , is not opposed to Buddhism. But humanism is consciously defined in opposition to Christianity and theism. So to say that humanism and theism can bot...
14 comments
Read more