The Government insisted at the time of the Civil Partnerships Bill that state-licensed civil partnerships, publicly entered into at a registry office or elsewhere, wouldn’t be state-licensed gay marriage (which it opposes). Rightly or wrongly, I believed that, in effect, they would be.
For this reason, I reluctantly, and perhaps mistakenly, voted against the Bill. I was all for equality in relation to life assurance, tax exemptions and so forth. But I was also against the state compromising an institution which is an integral feature of our social ecology. If this view seems eccentric, please remember that I’m far from isolated in holding it – since it is, after all, the position of the Government which (as I say) is opposed to gay marriage.
A couple called Tom Freeman and Katherine Doyle want a civil partnership. They “feel alienated from the patriarchal traditions of marriage”. They also “don’t want to take advantage of civil marriage when it is an option that is denied to our lesbian and gay friends”. They’ve been refused their wish, on the ground that under law civil partnership “is a relationship between two people of the same sex”.
Backed by Peter Tatchell, they say that they’re prepared “to go to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary”. I’m not a lawyer, but suspect that the Court, if the couple eventually reach it, may take a different view. There’s no international legal consensus at present that a gay couple has a human right to be married, so it’s not obvious that the Court would decide that a straight couple has a human right to a civil partnership.
But whatever the Court may or might decide, the Freeman/Doyle case raises some interesting questions. If the Government is to be taken at its word, and Civil Partnerships aren’t gay marriage, it’s hard to see why Freeman and Doyle should be denied one. True, there wouldn’t seem to be much point in having two legal arrangements on the statute book – marriage and civil partnership – which give straight couples equal access to rights under law. However, they are on the statute book - and are certain to remain so – so why not apply Ministers’ own logic?
Why not, in short, take them at their word, agree that civil partnerships aren’t gay marriage, decide that Freeman and Doyle should have access to this new institution, change the law accordingly, and allow them to contract their civil partnership and live happily ever after (as one does, even when preserved from the patriarchal traditions of marriage)? The couple have set up a Facebook campaign called Tom and Kat’s Straight Gay Wedding. This is, of course, a contradiction in terms - from their point of view, that is, since the foundation of their argument is that civil partnerships aren’t marriages in the first place. None the less, I see no decisive reason why they should be denied their wish, and may even sign up.
> Graeme Archer on CentreRight yesterday: You have a right not to be married