The government’s long-promised equal civil marriage consultation has been published. A summary of comment in the media and on the web includes – The key proposals of the consultation; Home Secretary Theresa May: Government will introduce same sex marriage whatever the Church says; MPs ‘will not be forced to support gay marriage’; Church leaders ‘fan the flames of homophobia’, says Equalities Minister; New poll shows Scotland opposed to ‘gay marriage’; Ten key moments in the history of marriage; A legal definition of marriage?; Gay marriage and the future of human sexuality
The key proposals of the consultation
Thinking Anglicans – This consultation sets out the government’s proposals to enable same-sex couples to have a civil marriage.
The key proposals of the consultation are:
• to enable same-sex couples to have a civil marriage i.e. only civil ceremonies in a register office or approved premises (like a hotel)
• to make no changes to religious marriages. This will continue to only be legally possible between a man and a woman
• to retain civil partnerships for same-sex couples and allow couples already in a civil partnership to convert this into a marriage
• civil partnership registrations on religious premises will continue as is currently possible i.e. on a voluntary basis for faith groups and with no religious content
• individuals will, for the first time, be able legally to change their gender without having to end their marriage
Current legislation allows same-sex couples to enter into a civil partnership, but not civil marriage.
http://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/archives/005415.html
Home Office site with text outlining consultation
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/about-us/consultations/equal-civil-marriage/
Home Secretary Theresa May: Government will introduce same sex marriage whatever the Church says
The Times – the Home Secretary and cabinet Minister for Equality, Theresa May, writes that marriage should be for everyone regardless of their sexuality. She strongly dismisses claims by the Church of England to determine who should be able to marry.
“My answer is that marriage should be for everyone, regardless of their sexual orientation. Society is stronger when people enter into a stable relationship; when they commit to each other; when they make binding vows to love, honour and cherish one another. That is a deeply conservative opinion — conservative with a big and a small “c”.” In a column timed to coincide with the publication of the Government’s plans for introducing same sex marriage, the Home Secretary asks: “Should two people who care deeply for each other, who love each other and who want to spend the rest of their lives together be allowed to marry?”
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article3351724.ece
Gay marriage consultation begins
BBC – The government is expected to launch a 12-week consultation later on allowing gay couples in England and Wales to marry. The proposal is being fiercely opposed by some senior church figures, as well as a number of Conservative MPs. Civil partnerships, introduced in 2005, already give gay couples the same legal rights as married couples. But the government wants to go further by allowing them to make vows and declare they are married before the next general election, due in 2015.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17375736
MPs ‘will not be forced to support gay marriage’
Daily Mail – MPs will get a free vote on controversial plans to allow gay marriage in an attempt to stop a Tory revolt. Downing Street is trying to stave off a mass rebellion by traditionalists furious at David Cameron’s promotion of the move to let couples of the same sex marry. Instead of whipping MPs to back government policy, they will be allowed to vote with their consciences instead.The decision came as it emerged that more than 200,000 campaigners have signed a petition on the No 10 website in support of keeping marriage between husbands and wives, making it the biggest active campaign in Britain.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2115168/MPs-handed-free-vote-gay-marriage-stop-Tory-rebellion.html#ixzz1pBC1o86Z
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9144282/MPs-will-not-be-forced-to-support-gay-marriage.html
Church leaders ‘fan the flames of homophobia’, says Equalities Minister
Telegraph – Lynne Featherstone, the Equalities Minister, has called for an end to “inflammatory” language by opponents of same-sex marriages, vowing gay unions would be law by 2015.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9144998/Church-leaders-fan-the-flames-of-homophobia-says-Equalities-Minister.html
New poll shows Scotland opposed to ‘gay marriage’
CNA – The majority of Scots do not support legal recognition of “gay marriage,” according to a recently conducted poll in the country.
“I hope that the Scottish Government will consider these findings very carefully and accept that objections to their proposals are not primarily religious but exist widely across society among people of all faiths and none,” a spokesman for the Scotland for Marriage campaign said March 14.
“There is clearly no support whatsoever for a society which creates in law a situation which deliberately deprives a child of a mother or a father.”
The Opinion Research Business’ January 2012 survey asked 1,004 Scottish adults to agree or disagree with the statement, “Since gay and lesbian couples already have the same rights as married couples available to them under civil partnership, they should not be allowed to redefine marriage for everyone else.”
Fifty-three percent of respondents agreed, while 36 percent disagreed.
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/new-poll-shows-scotland-opposed-to-gay-marriage/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
Ten key moments in the history of marriage
BBC News Magazine – Lauren Everitt writes – At the very heart of the debate about same-sex marriage is the definition of the word “marriage”. To some people, it changes to meet social and economic needs, to others it remains firmly fixed. So what has the institution meant down the years?
Much of the recent debate has focused on the notion of who “owns” marriage – the Church or the State. Both, however, have played key roles at different times in the history of the institution.
1. Strategic alliances
For the Anglo-Saxons and Britain’s early tribal groups, marriage was all about relationships – just not in the modern sense. The Anglo-Saxons saw marriage as a strategic tool to establish diplomatic and trade ties, says Stephanie Coontz, author of Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage. “You established peaceful relationships, trading relationships, mutual obligations with others by marrying them,” Coontz says.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17351133
A legal definition of marriage?
The Ugley Vicar blog – A quick ‘Google’ of the definition shows that it goes back to James Wilde, First Baron of Penzance, who in 1866 presided in the polygamy case of Hyde vs Hyde and Woodmansee. His ruling gave a definition of marriage in the terms now quoted:
What, then, is the nature of this institution as understood in Christendom?…If it be of common acceptance and existence, it must needs have some pervading identity and universal basis. I conceive that marriage, as understood in Christendom, may for this purpose be defined as the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman, to the exclusion of all others.
Accordingly, this has been the accepted ‘definition’. However, it is precisely his use of the term ‘Christendom’ which has caused some to question its acceptability.
Thus, in a paper published in 2007, Rebecca Probert of the University of Warwick presciently asks whether this is actually a definition of marriage, or rather “a defence of a traditional Christian model of marriage, which has been invoked whenever that model is under threat?”
Specifically, she considers whether the demand for same-sex marriage ought not to lead to “a more accurate definition of marriage for the twenty-first century”.
http://ugleyvicar.blogspot.com/2012/03/is-there-legal-definition-of-marriage.html
Gay marriage and the future of human sexuality
Religion & Ethics – By John Milbank – The controversy surrounding gay marriage has now reached a fever pitch in countries like Australia and the UK, as governments have begun to move past debate and towards legislative change. While such intensity can have the benefit of clarifying just what is at stake – on both sides of the argument – it can also obscure some of the deeper, intrinsically related issues.
So, in the UK, the arguments put forward by the coalition government in favour of legalising gay marriage have been, appropriately, at once liberal and conservative. In liberal terms it is seen as a matter of equal rights; in conservative terms a matter of promoting the good of faithful, long-term relationships for homosexual as well as heterosexual people.
Those resisting the change – mostly, but not entirely, religious people – argue that the issue is being framed in the wrong way. For them it is not a matter of extending the right, nor the teleological good, of marriage to gay people, but rather of redefining the very thing in which marriage consists.
http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/03/13/3452229.htm