Civil partnerships for straight couples

duchy

corf999 wrote: »

To be fair marriage is very outdated in modern society, with its history of family contracts, selling the woman and being hijacked by religion. It been part of the reason for keeping women repressed across the centuries.

Its extermely sexist in my opinion and I am very surprised many (most?) woman still "desire" it.

I would welcome a civil partnership for straight couples and I would consider it - however I have ruled out marriage as an archaic practice that should be long dead.

Always good to read the thread before posting <sigh>

duchy

And I thought I'd got ridiculous with CPs for hamsters !!!! :rotfl::rotfl:

duchy

arbroath_lass wrote: »

If they're the foundations of society then why can't they be the foundations of a civil partnership between two people of the opposite sex? (As they are in a civil partnership between two people of the same sex).

But Civil Partnerships are going to be phased out......so it's not exactly a solid foundation is it

Do you seriously believe the government when giving a choice (I did put straight choice but edited :P)between extending CP to get rid of the discrimination between straight and gay couples and give them both the marriage option only......or open up CP to the world and his dog (or hamster) and lose millions in tax revenue from inheritance dodging from every chancer who thinks CP could save them a bit of tax if they unite with someone on a very short term basis-cash in then dissolve the partnership and then do it all again 6 months later. It's a civil union not a chancer's charter !!

coolcait

onomatopoeia99 wrote: »

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?

It would have been nice if the Labour government in the early 2000s had managed to sort out proper marriage legislation for same sex couples.

However, given that there were still societal pressures against same sex marriage in the 2010s - after a decade of Civil Partnerships - I'll give that old government credit for getting something on to the statute books!

In Scotland, the introduction of legislation for same sex marriage has seen the Civil Partnership figures plummet.

The first quarter of 2015 saw 462 same sex marriages and 20 civil partnerships (57 fewer than the first quarter of 2014).

The second quarter of 2015 saw 427 same sex marriages and 8 civil partnerships (121 fewer than the same quarter the previous year).

The third quarter of 2015 saw 475 same sex marriages and 17 civil partnerships (123 fewer than the same quarter in 2014).

The figures are taken from the National Records of Scotland's quarterly information on "births, deaths and other vital events".

In Scotland at least, the uptake of same sex marriage is far greater than the uptake of civil partnerships.

Where did the BBC source their statistics? Are we looking at another north-south divide ? ;-)

coolcait

snowleopard61 wrote: »

I don’t (to say the least) share the views of the couple in question, and it doesn’t affect me personally, but I would like to see the right to civil partnerships extended to any two people who wish to enter into one, including those who are not presumed to be in any romantic or sexual relationship - e.g. siblings or friends who live together for companionship – provided that neither of them is in a marriage or civil partnership with anyone else.

This would provide a straightforward way for people to grant legal rights to any one person of their choice in matters of property or decision-making in difficult medical situations. It seems practical and sensible to me.

It's not a bad idea to have some kind of legal contract for those who share financial responsibilities without any kind of romantic or sexual entanglements.

In fact, that's a campaign which I might support.

However, my view is that the 'civil Partnership' legislation is not the correct legislation to tack it onto - for reasons already given.

I do think that if the CP legislation had been given a different title it would have been less confusing.

I can see why it wasn't given the honest, but hurtful, title of 'The Not Quite a Marriage (Second Class) Marriage Between Same Sex Couples Act 2004".

But "civil partnership" is too vague.

onomatopoeia99

duchy wrote: »

But Civil Partnerships are going to be phased out....

Where did you get that from?

The government evidence to the ongoing judicial review, submitted this week, was that the government is waiting to see the effect of equal marriage on civil partnerships before taking a decision on their future. Do you have inside knowledge of a decision by the cabinet which has not yet been announced?

duchy

onomatopoeia99 wrote: »

Where did you get that from?

The government evidence to the ongoing judicial review, submitted this week, was that the government is waiting to see the effect of equal marriage on civil partnerships before taking a decision on their future. Do you have inside knowledge of a decision by the cabinet which has not yet been announced?

It's clear they will be - as politically it makes more sense to remove them from the statute than to extend them - in part because of the issues of people who want to use them to change tax and pension status for non union couples like friends and siblings. Why anyone would want to piggyback onto what is now rather an unfortunate reminder that we had such discriminatory attitudes so recently.

The government needs to have equal legislation - at present it is not equal as there is a second tier process that gives same sex couples advantages not open to non same sex couples so that needs to be addressed.

There are two choices - end CPs - everyone has the choice to marry or not marry. All married couples regardless of gender have exactly the same rights -so there is equality OR extend to all - which gives everyone two choices but ultimately duplicates most rights and leaves the door open for extension for people who don't want to make a commitment to each other but simply want the tax and inheritance advantages -and access to private pensions which were financially designed to provide for people in a genuine relationship. Private pensions (and life insurances) are designed to benefit couples -and costed to reflect this. Would you really want your private pension contributions doubled to accomadate everyone who wants a union be that flatmates, business partners , siblings etc.

The first solves the problem of equality between committed couples regardless of their sex - the second opens up a big mess and potential for loss of tax revenues and instability in the financial sector - a government would have to be insane to take the second option when the first satisfies the intent to have equality for all couples.

The dual sex union campaigners have done themselves no favours with the reasons they have given for wanting CP as they are completely focused on trying to claim maritial rights without marriage but can only give reasons like "We don't want to be called husband and wife as it places us into social boxes" which frankly is rubbish. Anyone who has lived a reasonably broad life socially knows that marriage is whatever the couple want it to be -and roles and attitudes depend on the couple and not because they have a marriage certificate instead of CP paperwork..

The campaigning couple appear to have very little life experience. The woman in the couple is a post grad student who has apparently not worked but lived her adult life so far in academia in London- and complains that marriage would lock her and her partner into gender defined roles. It's all academic nonsense and nothing to do with how life is actually lived by the majority. What seems to escape this couple is that it really doesn't matter if they live over the brush , marry or have a CP (if they could) THEY are the ones who define any gender bias in their relationship not society. We don't live in the 1950s and women are no longer to give up work when they marry and stay home.

CP won't change anything - some people have very equal non gender led roles - others prefer more traditional roles - people will do what suits them and having CP won't change that. "I don't want to be called a wife" Not sure how CP will change that- I know gay men with CP's who refer to their partner as their husband and gay women who call their partner their wife - so CP isn't going to change those titles- some people will want to be called partner and some will want the spousal title regardless - I know a married women who always refers to her husband as her partner too. Having CP or not isn't going to change how people refer to themselves regardless of what is legally accurate.

If CP genuinely gave equality I'd be all for it - but it simply doesn't. It was stop gap legislation until gay marriage got onto the statutue - now it has it's time to get rid of what was essentially second class marriage for gay couples and a shameful reminder that our nation was so slow in giving equal marriage rights .

JasX

Why is this even an issue? If a straight couple really wants access to this watered down temporary stop-gap no harm in letting them.

Then when it is abolished (if this happens) they can be swept up in the administrative un-tangling too

Person_one

onomatopoeia99 wrote: »

Where did you get that from?

The government evidence to the ongoing judicial review, submitted this week, was that the government is waiting to see the effect of equal marriage on civil partnerships before taking a decision on their future. Do you have inside knowledge of a decision by the cabinet which has not yet been announced?

The cost in terms of public sector pensions would be astronomical. I doubt they'll extend civil partnerships just for that reason alone.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/reality-check/2013/may/20/civil-partnerships-pensions-how-much-will-it-cost

duchy

JasX wrote: »

Why is this even an issue? If a straight couple really wants access to this watered down temporary stop-gap no harm in letting them.

Then when it is abolished (if this happens) they can be swept up in the administrative un-tangling too

It's not currently legal so the harm would be they'd be acting illegally and to change it would require parliamentary debate and voting so would take too long to have any point.

There won't be an administrative untangling . CP will cease to become legal on a particular dates - CP's contracted before that date will keep the legal rights they have and no more will be contracted.

No point in adding extra participants to what will soon become a redundant legal contractual agreement.