Hurrah, but they're still called "civil partnerships", which is not the same as "marriage". I know some of you think it shouldn't be called "marriage" because it's different from marriages between a man and a woman, but I do think the name should be the same for it to constitute the same right heterosexual people have.
As JohnK once said (and more people before and after him) words are important, and the way we name things is highly relevant.
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'I've discovered the secret of life. A lot of hard work, a lot of sense of humor, a lot of joy and a whole lot of tra la la.' Kay Thompson
Amen Alby, but I assure you Iīll be calling it marriage regardless of what anybody says, and Iīll fight for the law to be changed so that THEY call it marriage too
whoīs up for fighting the government, the churches and the conservatives to get it called MARRIAGE!!!???
.....
nobody?
*shrinks into a corner*
splashi xxx
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Three things that mark the Good Man: Truth, Honour and Love
well thatīs just gone and dashed my hopes of a brave an valiant struggle against oppression and tyranny deep within the heart of the bastard islands of britain hasnīt it?
and i was looking forward to putting on woad paint and a kilt whilst screaming "they make take our income, but theyīll never take our rainbow flags!!!"
so much for valour.
spain it is then!
skreesh xxx
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Three things that mark the Good Man: Truth, Honour and Love
There was a time when i was very gay-lib about the issue of Gay Marriage and i tended to take the radical left stance that we shouldn't be imitating the heterosexual oppressors and live a life of free-love and brotherly solidarity, but now I have a very different view. Civil partnership is part of a shift of gay love being accepted and cherished by our social institutions. We've now got the right not only to sexual freedom, but build a life with the person we love, supported by the state, inheritence, pension rights ect. We are no longer forced to see our long-term relationships as second rate but as institutionally valid. These days I'm more inclined to think that free-love is fine but love within boundaries is deeply special. The change in the law represents an evolution of same-sex love from a social virus to a valued part of British society. This evolution of values was predicted more than a century ago by the gay Socialist Edward Carpenter. who wrote;
"I think that the Uranian (homosexual) love undoubtedly suffers from want of a recognition and a standard. And though it may at present be better off than if subject to a foolish and meddlesome regulation; yet in the future it will have its more or less fixed standards and ideals, like the normal love. If one considers for a moment how the ordinary relations of the sexes would suffer were there no generally acknowledged codes of honour and conduct with regard to them, one then indeed sees that reasonable forms and institutions are a help".
I agree with Carpenter's insight. Having an institution of marital love for LGBT people sets a standard, (a standard which people are of course free to reject), but it is still a standard and offers us reconignition by wider society. In our community, many have lacked such a standard and a pervasive unhappy hedonism has been the result. It is people's choice to live in whatever way they please as long it does hurt others; but the state should give reward and sanction to long-term conpanionships, which looking at it cynically, save the government money, (eg your partner can look after the children rather than getting-child-care). The state should make it easier for people to form long-lasting relationships, be they gay or straight, because I think companship is good for society, because companionship produces social solidaruty and that can only be for the good.
Marriage, institutionalised companionship, whatever is not perfect, you only have to look at divorce rates, Yet through it all there is something special even sacred about the idea which we should defend I myself believe that human beings have a god-given gift for companionship, that we fulfill the best part of our human nature when we cultivate our love for a single human being over years. Ask any social anthropologist and he'll talk about the social importance of kinship. In a committed relationship become intertwined with them on a deep level and it is this sense of connection which the real essence of marriage and it is this dare I say spiritual union that state-reconised marriage should help to facilitate. It is this kind of profound love which Plato praises in his symposim when he says:
"Do you desire to be wholly one; always day and night to be in one another's company? for if this is what you desire, I am ready to melt you into one and let you grow together, so that being two you shall become one, and while you live a common life as if you were a single man, and after your death in the world below still be one departed soul instead of two-I ask whether this is what you lovingly desire, and whether you are satisfied to attain this?"-there is not a man of them who when he heard the proposal would deny or would not acknowledge that this meeting and melting into one another, this becoming one instead of two, was the very expression of his ancient need. And the reason is that human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called love,"
This why I welcome civil partnerships because the state is finally coming to terms wirh the profoundness of our love and has committed itself to help us mature in the love we bare for our long-term partners, giving us the same rights and responsibilities as our straight counterparts. This a great piece of legal advance for LGBT people and a testament to how far we've come since homosexuality was de-criminalised in 1968. Well done Britain!
To be honest, if I wanna tie myself down, become an ikea fanatic and breed cats, with sum random lesleybean... I couldn't give a toss about having it in a church cos i don't believe in god, to be honest, I don't care what its called, as long as we'd have same legal rights as a married couple...
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Nic - Union Council LGBT Assembly Chair
Contact me at - lgbt.assembly@leeds.ac.uk / nicturner_85@hotmail.com
ChersBitch18 wrote: Equal but different is not equality
Cher's bitch is right. This is inequality cleverly guised as equality delivered to us by a government who pander to everyone.
Marriage isn't a wholly religous concept. In this country people get married in civil cermonies in registry offices all the time. If LGBT people aren't allowed to 'marry' but are given a different, lesser way of registering their relationships and cementing their commitment, their realtishiops are being distinguished from those of hetersexual couples - our relationships become less valid and second class.
We need to welcome civil partnerships as a step towards equality, not as equaltiy itself.
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Johnk
The only freedom that youll ever really know
Is written in books from long ago
indeed john, i think both yourself and cherīs bitch have a point there...
what amazes me still, is that whenever the word "marriage" comes up, itīs still being used in a more or less judaeo-christian way of thinking...hello?! marriage (not the word, lol) has been around for longer than 2000 years. there are a huge number of precedents that span the globe, for the reality and validity of same-sex unions, religious and secular. hindu culture, the mayans, the aztecs, the celts, the navajo, the incas, the cretans/minoans, the greeks...somebody ought to take those into account at some stage...
i have to say, iīm not a big fan of equality. it smacks of "letīs bring each other down to the same level, and make everyone exactly the same". poppycock. im not the same as anybody else in the world, and so neither is anybody else. i think the aim of equality should not be equalising people,ie, homogeneity, as seems to be the majority case, but rather, equality on the basis of shared acceptance of differences, and the validity of those differences to even exist. that to me, is true equality.
adam said something about not bothering to get marriage recognised by a god, and i agree - in part. i want to see marriage recognised by religious institutions not because itīs what i want, but what many other LGBT people want, and i think they have a right to that, so iīll fight for that even if i donīt want it myself.
personally i just wanna get hitched, sprogged up, and preferably all with a lovely bloke.
takers?
anybody?
skreesh xxx
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Three things that mark the Good Man: Truth, Honour and Love
I'd marry Tony Blair just to domestic violence him.
It should be called Gay Marriage like it is in Spain and Canada etc. You might say you don't care what it's called but "Civil Partnerships" make it sound like some sort of business deal not a loving commitment to someone. By giving gay unions a different inferior title it makes the statement that our love is in someway inferior or not as meaningful as heterosexual love which is absolute bullsh*t!
I agree that civil partnerships are an important step towards marriage. But the big thing is that many in the media are calling it marriage even if they are using quotation marks. Eventually the qoutation marks will drop out of use as it becomes accepted.
However seperate is not equal and we should continue to campaign for it to be called marriage. I also want to be able to marry my partner if there ever is one in a church. I'm not going to make religious establishments who disagree with me about homosexuality perform same sex marriages but those who do agree should be able to perform them. In many cases this will be individual places of worship rather than entire religions.
I see people are trying to refresh the issue again. Consider the first civil partnerships of that kind in the UK were acknowledged in December, if I am right. I think we should let things cool down a bit. Think it over again, and then start a campain to support really equal rights, like the right to use the term 'marriage'
Going to take a few years at least and need to find a boyfriend first before I can get married at all. But getting married in a church is my longterm aim, or at least a blessing.
