Civil partnerships for straight couples

Person_one

I heard them on the radio this evening, and one of their arguments is that they don't want to be 'Mr and Mrs' which just makes them look ridiculous, has nobody on their legal team pointed out that Mrs is a completely optional title and that it sounds silly to make a fuss out of it.

coolcait

Person_one wrote: »

I heard them on the radio this evening, and one of their arguments is that they don't want to be 'Mr and Mrs' which just makes them look ridiculous, has nobody on their legal team pointed out that Mrs is a completely optional title and that it sounds silly to make a fuss out of it.

I didn't hear that interview. Luckily.

I would have been asked why I was shouting at the radio (again)

The arguments put forward by this couple, in support of their argument to have Civil Partnerships extended to opposite sex couples, are heavily based on 'what people tend to do' when getting married, rather than 'what the law says you must do' when getting married.

From that point of view alone, their campaign seems ill-founded, misguided, uninformed and frivolous.

While they have every right to spend their own money on this campaign (if they are doing so), and their supporters have every right to spend their money by donating to the campaign, I find myself balking at the amount of public money which is being spent to deal with this ill-founded etc campaign.

I've supported many a campaign in the past. I'll no doubt support many a campaign in the future.

That doesn't include this campaign.

LannieDuck

I would have preferred to have a civil ceremony with my OH. Part of the required wording of the marriage ceremony was that it's an institution between one man and one woman (I can't recall the exact words now). That was a little uncomfortable because we had friends with us who are bi or gay. I'd much rather have had a ceremony that wasn't so blatantly discriminatory.

Also, when signing the register it asked for my father's occupation but not my mother's. I guess that's leftover from the bride as property of the father being given over to the husband. It rankled.

duchy

I'm probably going to regret posting because this silly couple really annoy me. They are as daft as the people who can't understand that a marriage ceremony is just that a ceremony and has nothing to do with white dresses or a party after the ceremony .

To illustrate

Mr Keidan and Miss Steinfeld want their relationship recognised in law, but they do not want to get married.
Miss Steinfeld told the BBC: "We see each other as partners in life and want to be partners in law.
"We want to be able to celebrate our relationship with each other and formalise our commitment to each other within a social institution which is modern, which is symmetrical and that focuses on equality, which is exactly what a civil partnership is."

To me they are describing modern marriage in the above- an equal partnership - with equal property rights that is social acknowledgement of their life partnership as well as legal.

Was marriage symmetrical (or fair) two hundred years ago ? No- but today it is and marriage is a celebration of how equal marriage is today in our society.

By the same argument they are looking to reject a full and symmetrical union for a legal process that confers fewer legal rights upon them as a couple than marriage does - Just as the gay community now rejects civil partnership in favour of full marriage as it is more inclusive both legally and socially- this looney , self obsessed couple are fighting for fewer rights and a relationship that is regarded by most as socially inferior to marriage (evidenced by the huge numbers of gay couples who have already or intend to "upgrade" from CP to marriage.).

Another quote from the post grad anti bride "For Tom and I, the role of the husband and the role of a wife seem very strict and that's not for us,"
Is she really so unaware that marriage is what you make it - and most modern couples don't conform to her imagined stereotypes ? Where on earth do people get these bizarre ideas from ????

They are living in some kind of time warp and apparently cannot see that marriage has - and continues to evolve as societal and economic mirrors of our society. They appear to be fighting a battle but the war has already been won but they have failed to notice !!

duchy

LannieDuck wrote: »

I would have preferred to have a civil ceremony with my OH. Part of the required wording of the marriage ceremony was that it's an institution between one man and one woman (I can't recall the exact words now). That was a little uncomfortable because we had friends with us who are bi or gay. I'd much rather have had a ceremony that wasn't so blatantly discriminatory.

Also, when signing the register it asked for my father's occupation but not my mother's. I guess that's leftover from the bride as property of the father being given over to the husband. It rankled.

Whilst I agree the father's occupation is something that could (and should) do with an update I don't believe it invalidates the entire concept of marriage - as for the one man and one woman phrasing - well you are one man and one woman biologically and *at that point in time* you couldn't be married as "two women" or "two men" but now you CAN so that difficulty has surely disappeared with the legalization of same sex marriage which has brought true equality ?

My great, great grandmother was married off to the son of the owner of an adjacent farm to the one her father owned - to unite the two farms - Should I refuse to get married because she didn't have the same choices that I have..... or should I celebrate that I as a modern woman I can choose to marry whoever I like regardless of their property owning status, sex, race, religion and in fact by rejecting marriage would I be rejecting the changes and advances in society with my focus on past injustices . Should Mandela have refused any role in government in South Africa because it was unequal in the past or should he have relished and embraced being a part of a more enlightened society and helped build a more equal nation ?

History is important - but we don't live in the past . We learn from it and look to creating a better future surely ?

onomatopoeia99

coolcait wrote: »

The very existence of 'Civil Partnership' legislation lies in the fact that same sex couples were discriminated against.

To the extent that even the genuinely groundbreaking Civil Partnership legislation was still a poor imitation of the legal rights enjoyed by opposite sex couples for generations.

I agree, it should have been equal marriage from the start, it's what I was campaigning for then and continued to do so until the law was change. I don't know what the Labour party were thinking, introducing such discriminatory legislation when they had the commons majority to do it properly from the start.

The important point though is that what has gone before doesn't stop the situation we have now being discriminatory, it's simply discriminatory against the majority.

Someone here said that the gay community (is there a "heterosexual community" too?) has rejected civil partnerships now marriage is available, but in fact since the change in the law, 17% of all legal unions of same sex couples are civil partnerships (source : BBC). Had that figure been 2%, or lower I would accept "reject", but one in six is a significant proportion. Is it conceivable that one in six different sex couples would opt for a union that wasn't called marriage if one were available? Further, is it conceivable that more different sex couples that won't consider marriage would enter a legal union of some kind if one was available that didn't have the historical / religious associations and baggage of marriage?

duchy

onomatopoeia99 wrote: »

Someone here said that the gay community (is there a "heterosexual community" too?) has rejected civil partnerships now marriage is available, but in fact since the change in the law, 17% of all legal unions of same sex couples are civil partnerships (source : BBC). Had that figure been 2%, or lower I would accept "reject", but one in six is a significant proportion. Is it conceivable that one in six different sex couples would opt for a union that wasn't called marriage if one were available? Further, is it conceivable that more different sex couples that won't consider marriage would enter a legal union of some kind if one was available that didn't have the historical / religious associations and baggage of marriage?

By your argument - If it is right that this couple reject marriage because it was historically unequal - should same sex couples also reject it because it was historically unfair too and has "bad" historical connotations ?

Likewise should this couple be campaigning for the right to have access to a legal state that is "such discriminatory legislation" and should never have gone on the statue books in the first place but should have been rejected in favour of full equality from the start ? (I do think Labour were extraordinarily cowardly about this at the time.) If we reject one state (marriage) on the grounds it was historically discriminatory -should we also be rejecting CP on the same grounds?

If 17% of same sex couples chose CP does that mean the other 83% chose full marriage ? That's a pretty definitive majority if so. (Can you cite a source please)

As for is there a heterosexual community.......I think it's pretty much acknowledged that those who wanted same sex marriage certainly accessed the gay political lobby to promote their cause -and rightly so. Gay rights activism is hardly a new concept after all I'm not however seeing such enthusiasm from heterosexuals supporting this current attempt at change.

missbiggles1

duchy wrote: »

I hope they don't.

It's completely stupid and undermines both marriage and choosing not to marry with their silly posturing .

They wouldn't recognize true equality if it bit them on the bum

Of course, that's exactly what the anti marriage brigade want to do.

TonyMMM

LannieDuck wrote: »

I would have preferred to have a civil ceremony with my OH. Part of the required wording of the marriage ceremony was that it's an institution between one man and one woman (I can't recall the exact words now). That was a little uncomfortable because we had friends with us who are bi or gay. I'd much rather have had a ceremony that wasn't so blatantly discriminatory.

Also, when signing the register it asked for my father's occupation but not my mother's. I guess that's leftover from the bride as property of the father being given over to the husband. It rankled.

Assuming your marriage was more than a couple of years ago then the wording was required because (rightly or wrongly) that was the law at the time - since the introduction of same sex marriage the official wording has been changed to "marriage is the union of two people....."

There is no requirement to include father's details on the marriage register if you don't want to - and there is a legal change currently going through to include mother's details anyway.

onomatopoeia99

Duchy, as stated source was the BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35352629

The civil partnership legislation was discriminatory on two fronts:
1. It did not open marriage to same sex couples
2. It did not open civil partnerships to different sex couples.

The first of those was addressed, the second wasn't.

I have no interest in "undermining marriage", that would be particularly obtuse of me since I campaigned for equal marriage! But doubtless someone will come along and tell me that by supporting extending marriage to more couples, I wanted to undermine marriage :rotfl:.