And Skorrdal’s right. Iceland is in a pretty bad financial situation because of the PRIVATE BANKS that screwed EVERYONE over. The people of Iceland have to pay a huge debt per person- bigger than Germany had to pay after WW2. And for what crime? Trusting their banks! It’s a horrible situation for everyone.

I know we’ve been here before, SMC, but you’re talking about two different things. Your confidence and pride in who you are is one matter, but how you are treated by society is another. Just because you quite rightly consider yourself equal, it doesn’t follow that your thinking that will guarantee others treat you so.

As for different names – well, to me that’s ‘separate but equal’, which isn’t equal at all. If we’re all equal then we should all have access to the same things, be given the same choices and be treated the same by the law. I don’t want separate doors for women/non-white people/the disabled/LGBT people, and I would take NO comfort in someone pointing out to me that the doors lead into the same building.

When women fought for the vote it wasn’t because they wanted to be just like men, and I actually find it insulting that that’s the logical implication of your ‘assimilation’ issue. All they wanted was to be treated as equal while retaining their difference – ie their female gender.

Getting married or wishing to have the option to marry doesn’t make gay people ‘more straight’ anymore than being able to vote makes me a man (or indeed implies that I want to be one). Straight people don’t own marriage – there have always been same sex marriages throughout antiquity. Yes, most people who marry will be straight simply because straight people make up the majority of the population, but that doesn’t mean marriage is their special thing. Moreover, every marriage is different. Straight people might sit there in their slippers dozing off in front of the News At Ten, or whatever view you have of marriage that makes you reject it, or they might, like many of my straight friends, have lives just as exciting, different and unique as before they got married.

We shouldn’t have special alternatives for people because they’re gay/black/disabled. That’s unnecessary and offensive.

“Giving something a different name does not equate to inequality.”

I think it probably does actually. If you are determined that we just have a different name for our marriages, you won’t mind if we rename them from Civil Partnerships to “pink fudge cakes” I am assuming? According to your “whats in a name” logic we can call them anything, as long as they are legally the same, even if what we call them is insulting.

Sorry, Patrick, we clearly take a different view on this. If the state of Iceland has failed to pay us the money it owes us, I don’t actually think that debt gets lost on the election of a new Prime Minister. To me, that personal has taken over ALL the responsibilities of government.

As for same sex marriage being inevitable, I suspect it will be in a number of countries. I have always been happy with equality though and have never felt the need to mimic anyone in order to fit in. I wasn’t bought up to believe I was inferior or to be ashamed of what I was. I was taught that despite being black when most people were white I was equal, that being gay when most people were straight I was equal.

I don’t remember once my mother ever saying to me that even though I was black and gay, they would refer to me as being white and straight, in order that I was ‘equal’.

Things can be different in this world and yet still be equal. Giving something a different name does not equate to inequality. Once you go down that road where does it stop … man, woman, unequal?

Possibly because those homophobic, pathetic Gay Uncle Toms of the Stonewall Group have abrogated their responsibilities towards the LGB population in return for access to those in power.

The fact that Britain’s self-styled leading LGBT rights charity supports homophobic Apartheid is a source of enormous shame and embarrassment for Britain.

I am surprised you have not posted your normal heterophobic anti marriage “we are all going to have to assimilate and become scary heterosexuals” rant. Since you are apparently scared to death at the idea of homosexuals being treated equally and are desperate that we maintain our own institutions, I would say this article about yet another country in which exactly the opposite to what you want is happening must have scared you.

I am afraid to say SMC that you will be on the losing side of history on this one. Same sex marriage is inevitable, and Civil Partnership zealots like you will just have to get used to it.

I mean its lovely of course that she can afford to get married but there are a lot of people in this country will go without because Iceland has walked away from its debts to us.

She clearly doesn’t have too many issues with her work-life balance (or any sort of conscience).

If she’s coming anywhere near here for the honeymoon, please God someone slap an international arrest warrant on her.

It was also highly significant in her election to her office, since it was a deliberate switch from an establishment that had monumentally failed. A man, even a gay man, would not, at that point, have been elected.

So, PinkNews, report it properly.

Is this report suggesting that the Prime Minister and her partner ignored the fact that the new law automatically turns the previous civil partnerships into marriages and trotted along for a new ceremony? Or is it incompetently reporting that that they were one of the couples who automatically attained married status?

PinkNews seems bent on erasing lesbianism in this story. Not only is this couple “gay”, but are these “gay marriages”, and the prime minister is the first “out gay head of state”. Is PinkNews trying to drive away its female readers?

Equal access to marriage, and not separate and therefore inherently discriminating access to some alternative, is a huge story currently. We deserve reporting that understands that. The phrase “gay marriage” exactly misses the point.

Just waiting for someone to tell us that that volcano was all a judgement

Which is it? Or are we saying the changed from CPs to CUs and now marriage?