Of course we need straights to fight this battle with us, who else is in the majority and controls government? Straights! We need to court as many straight allies as possible to form a large marriage equality movement. We can’t do it alone. Forget Stonewall, they’re useless and not even in the picture. This lovely straight couple are to be commended and we should be supporting them as much as we can.

Tim, you’re right, parliamentary action is the only way we can address this inequality in the law and with mounting straight support, we may just be able to do it. The squeaky wheel gets the most response. We need to adopt the American “can do” approach to things, not sit on the sidelines and shrug our shoulders. Get proactive, shake a few cages, make a few phone calls, petition, contact your representatives and keep the fire of full equality burning. We deserve nothing less.

It’s quite farcical that we should argue about something where the answer is already in the premise.

Seems to me that everyone here has a point. It IS a matter of semantics. it shouldn’t really matter if its a CP or a Marriage. The important thing is the legal protection a couple have with a registered partnership.

BUT, I think of the reaction of a straight friend of mine when I called the partner of a gay friend ‘his husband’. She clearly felt the word inappropriate and questioned whether a couple with a civil partnership were ‘married’ in the same sense and could use such words. It struck me that some straight people think CP IS a lesser form of marriage and not the same thing. And by thinking that, they devalue a gay partnership as ‘less’ than a hetero marriage. The only solution to that, in my opinion, is to get rid of the distinction.

My argument all along is that there is virtually NO Difference between the two, and all this bitching is simply about what the f_ck the damn thing is called. Most people of my age would have thought the concept unimaginable even 30 years ago, yet it is now a reality, yet STILL some ungrateful sh!tebags still continue to moan about what they haven’t got.

It reminds me of one of Douglas Adam’s books where all the dross of society like telephone sanitisers and estate agents are dumped on a planet, and people discussing how they are going to survive, whilst all they gay hairdressers try to make curling tongs from sticks and argue about what colour the cave they are in should be…

17 years ago, there was a lot wrong with gay equality, but bit by bit, the gap has closed, so now people squabble over the minutiae left. The bottom line is we have (legally) pretty well everything that most of us have wanted. Unfortunately public acceptance will take a lot longer.

Why have no lesbian or gay couples sought to challenge the ban on same-sex civil marriage, some have asked. They have.

In March 1992 – 17 years ago – OutRage! organised five same sex couples to file applications for civil marriage at Marylebone registry office. They were refused. When OutRage! appealed to the LGBT community to donate to a legal fund to challenge the refusal, we got very little support (sadly). So we could not pursue it. But these five couples will go down in history as true pioneers for LGBT equality.

This is interesting. I would like to hear more. I saw the SNP Nicola woman last night on “Question Time” and there’s something about her that frightens me. But that’s just a feeling. Why did you say they are “extremely homophobic”? And do you know if gays in Scotland generally understand this?

Lets be realistic about civil partnerships There is NO universal standard across Europe or in the western world. British CPs are more equal than the French version, PACs, that do not convey nearly as many of the rights of CPS, ditto other EU states with some semblance of same-sex equality laws. How on earth can any of them be equal to marriage with some having more rights and others having very few? It makes no sense unless there is a universal EU standard, until that happens, portability doesn’t really work the way its supposed to as it does for marriage. CPs will NEVER be the universal standard which only proves they are not equal.

there is another thread on this and I left that because some disruption was coming from a person descending to offence and hijacking civil discussion!

I agree, there are some differences between CP and Marriage (don’t tell my partner about there being no obligation to have sex though, please). But they are surely minor compared to the alternative.

The alternative, back when CPs came into existence was nothing at all. Pushing for marriage would have caused the campaign to fail – that’s pretty clear. So we would not have had CPs, and parliamentary process and time being what it is, the whole thing would have gone onto the back burner until Brussels nudged us again.

There is a group who feel that we were sold a pup. That those at the pointy end of the campaign gave up and took second best. It is a view sometimes heatedly espoused in the other thread. But it is wrong, in fact. The prospect of our getting, marriage, back then, was zero. The Church(as) and the forces of conservatism were, infuriatingly but predictably, intent on blocking it. So, while there was strong political momentum behind getting, at least CP, the peers took all that was available at the time. Sometimes, as then, pragmatism is the only course.

Test it now. Ask this question. If you could give back the right to have CPs now, against the right to continue for marriage, would you do it?

I wouln’t for sure.

Instead, let’s keep what we have hard won, and fight for the next step.

There are numerous ways a CP is deficient to a civil marriage only the gay capitulators refuse to acknowledge them and instead repeat the meme that the battle over equal marriage rights is simply fight about nomenclature.

http://www.alternativefamilylaw.co.uk/en/gay-lesbian/civil-partnership.htm

The answer, Jon, to which nobody on here actually wants to admit to is: *SWEET FANNY ADAMS*

All this squabbling is simply about labelling, because the government agreed with gay marriage, but didn’t want to be seen pissing off the bible-bashers, so they gave it a different name.

This couple appear to be a pair of media seeking idiots out on a PR job, and I wouldnt be at all suprised if the whole thing was a set-up by a bunch of right-on gay lefties like Peter Tatchell to highlight “The enormity of the continued injustice and inequality heaped upon the gay community”. (ah, poor diddums)

What a complete and utter f_cking farce.

The right to choose to be different is fundamental and should be strongly defended. But being forced into a different legal status whne you don’t want that is wrong.

While I do not think the couple are publicity-junkies, I do find it odd that a complaint from ONE – that is right ONE – straight couple should become news not just in the UK but around the world. Is it not strange how for two millennia gay couples have been denied absolutely EVERY right out there including the right to live and not a voice was raised until the last couple of decades. Suddenly, a straight couple are denied civil partnership registry and all hell breaks loose! Just an observation.

There were several references throughout the blog to court challenges and to events, etc. in Canada (with reference to the Wilkinson-Kitzinger marriage challenge in the UK).

Court challenges are the way to go in many jurisdictions around the world – especially in federal type states like Canada, USA, Australia). Keep challenging, don’t give up at one or two losses and say “Oh well, we tried, ” and then give up. After a couple of decades of court challenges across Canada, with so, so many ending up as losses – until finally a wedge was open by a court in BC in May of 2003. That led to a landmark decision in Ontario in June 2003 that opened the judicial floodgates in our country. Within two years, SSM was legal in 9 of the 10 provinces and 2 of the 3 territories simply through court challenges.

But court challenges work in unitary states as well. Examples, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Montevideo are cities in Latin American states where it worked – and now Uruguay following Montevideo’s experience is considering SSM.

Oddly enough, some of our provinces experimented with the Civil Union/Civil Partnership (Nova Scotia and Québec come to mind) in order to stave off the “marriage problem”) but they did just not take off here. Since most Canadian provinces already had common-law marriages/relationships laws already, it seemed pointless.

Like the music says “WE WANT IT ALL OR NOT AT ALL”

“You gotta love it!!” Canada recognises all marriages between any two PEOPLE who are wed in Canada (NOTE no citizenship or residency required) and it also recognises all marriages in any other jurisdiction where such marriage is indeed legal. But the federal government never recognised civil partnership. So while the Wilkinson-Kitzinger marriage is legal here in Canada but not in the UK, however, if they take up a Civil Partnership in the UK it will be recognised the but not back in Canada – but they are already married here so what the hay?

This is an argument for marriage equality not an argument for segregating different groups of people into different institutions. Denying gays the freedom to marry and instead forcing us to have a legally deficient union (CPs are by no means equal when it comes to pensions and international recognition) no more celebrates differences than forcing black people to use separate water fountains does.

France is to change its laws concerning partner inheritance and tax, vaste swathes of the EU don’t notice it, elements of English law ignore it: it isn’t marriage, just the best we could wring out of a labour govt in hock to various religions