Not sure about that - one of the major reasons touted when civil partnerships were introduced was the fact that it gave gay partners a definite legal status in circumstances where a partner may die and a family would in the past have stepped in and claimed an estate, possibly because they never "approved" of a gay partner or even refused to accept that their relative could be gay - examples were given at the time of the introduction of the bill.

Same-sex marriage debate bingo card

Only because marriage wasn't on the cards for gay couples. That is there was a way for hetrosexual couples to get the legal status (get married) whereas the gay couple could not. If gay couples can marry then there is no longer a need for civil partnerships to grant them the legal status.

I am not saying I agree that there isn't a case for civil partnerships for anyone gay or not but rather a party like the Tories who value the institution of marriage could logically adopt this stance to dismiss the amendment being put forward to wreck the bill.

Are we to assume the Lords will vote against it? Meaning Cameron would have to use the Parliament Act to force it through.

I think this would factor in a time-delay of about a year, if not longer.

Assuming it is several months before this gets debated and voted on in the Lords, I can see the Bill getting pushed into the next parliament, or ditched completely.

Unlikely. Only 71 out of 212 Tories would need to support the bill as that figure in addition to the Labour + Lib Dem votes outvotes all the remaining Tories plus all the cross benchers and various other odds and bobs such as Plaid Cymru.

And that would assume absolutely everybody else objected which is not very likely.

In my view in the very unlikely event of all the 212 Tories voting against the bill there would easily be enough cross-bench support to pass it.

Lab+Lib = 99 majority over the Conservatives so you would need over half the cross-bench peers (182 of em in total) to vote against it plus ALL of the 212 Conservatives.

I can't see the entire Tory contingent rebelling against the government and even though there are other Lords (total of 5icon_cool.gif including 25 "Lords Spiritual" (clergy) I can't see them all voting en-masse against the bill if they even turn up!

I can't see the point in civil partnerships once all couples can marry. What's the difference between a low key, non religious registry office wedding and a civil partnership?

If there was no difference, there'd have been no campaign for equal marriage.

The difference was that gay couples were forced into civil partnerships rather than marriage. Take that away and what else is there?

Indeed.

In which case, since nobody is planning to remove the opportunity for a gay couple to decide what level (if you will) of formal commitment they wish to make, the same options should be available to heterosexual couples too.

I still think the concept of gay "marriage" is ludicrous. It seems to me that the concept of marriage came about as a mechanism for holding couples together for the long period of time needed to raise human offspring. The fact that gay people cannot procreate seems to make it a wholly unneccesary concept so far as they are concerned. By all means allow them the same legal rights but let's keep the word and concept of "marriage" true to its original and cultural meaning.

By this argument, no heterosexual couple that adopts or decides to remain childless will need to marry.

The thing about words and concepts that are made up is that you can confer whatever meaning onto them as is desired and there's no requirement for either to remain with a single definition for eternity.

Anyway, my mate Gareth (gay, in a civil partnership) has a son. Me and my missus don't. So... y'know.

Norman Tebbitt's views: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... y-son.html

Norman Tebbitt's views: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... y-son.html

Well, I'm truly shocked, I was sure you were gay. Anyway, I think you thinking it's ludicrous is what's ludicrous.


It did? Perhaps you should run that one past the anthropologists. I'm pretty sure, as a species, we managed to get through maybe a couple of hundred thousand years just fine to dominate the world, without marriage. Elephants and primates (for example) seem to do alright too, but AFAIK they don't hold marriage ceremonies either. I conclude that the "mechanism" is plainly unnecessary, and irrelevant to that purpose.


But marriage is not restricted to those who can procreate. Are you saying an older couple who wish to marry, or any couple who cannot reproduce by natural means, should be debarred? If not, then why shouldn't they? They can no more fulfil your requirement of raising human offspring than a gay couple, so what would be the distinction?

Are you against the millions who live their lives (and in many cases successfully procreate) without ever getting married? (Even if you are, and think they are doomed to hellfire for living in sin, you have to admit, it doesn't seem to affect reproductive capacity).


Well, that's mighty big of you. A tad condescending, ("allow", indeed) but FYI they already have "the same legal rights" for the most part and it is irrational to propose that this is as it should be, while at the same time proposing that there should be exceptions for bits you personally don't like.


Indeed: a formal union of two people who wish to express publicly and officially their wish to spend the rest of their lives together. All you need to get past now is your phobia of gays, and accept that they are just normal people, some of whom are not interested in marriage, and some of whom are. It makes no difference to you, and you would protest like hell (rightly) if gays tried to restrict your rights, so what gives you the right to restrict theirs?

That wasn't the point. It was if [uall couples can marry[/u why the need for civil partnerships once this is so given there will be next to no difference between a registry office wedding and a civil partnership?

What is the difference between a civil partnership and registry office wedding if they are open to all and confer the same legal status to all?

I wish someone had explained this to me 30 years ago.

You'd be refering to me as "The Millionaire JerryChicken" now.

My understanding is that there are legal/pensions/tax differences anyway – and the civil partnership was not and is not marriage, which is a particular social construct.

Get hitched in a registry office and you're still married.. The original legislation was to enable LGBT couple to formalise their relationships, but without the big emotional row we're getting now because marriage is something different again.

The reality is that it means different things for different people; it has never meant the same throughout all human history or been carried out in the same way. but for many people it appears to be considered the apotheosis of a public statement of commitment.

Not all LGBT people will want to 'upgrade' their civil partnership into a marriage. They will have a choice (which they do not currently have). So the choice should also be extended to straight couple who don't want to marry but wish for some legal formality etc.

Indeed.
Equality should be a 2 way street.

It didn't even mean the same throughout the relatively short space of time covered by The Bible, despite what those who use religion to justify their bigotry would have us believe.

Aye, well.
You're wrong and it appears to me, from your past rantings, that your opposition is rooted in some kind of feeling of superiority over gay people and you just can't stomach the fact that their love for each other might be just as valid as yours.

So you appear know what I think now!?

No. he said on the basis of "your past rantings". The two are not necessarily one and the same.

I was under the impression that there aren't any legal/pension/tax differences. If there are, then there shouldn't be. It would certainly be wrong for there to be two distinct legal institutions with different legal rights. Not least because it would be confusing and misleading for those entering into civil partnerships. I would bet that 90+% of those entering into a civil partnership would do so believing that they were gaining the same legal rights of a marriage.

I don't see anything wrong in people describing their relationship as a marriage, civil partnership, common law marriage, cohabitation or whatever. But there shouldn't be different legal institutions.

See the link to Lord Tebbit's interview to see where this could all lead from a tax planning angle.

Lord Tebbit misses the point, the VERY BIG point that its not possible to legally marry your own blood relative, whether that be your children or your siblings.

For some reason he is under the impression that any new legislation to allow gay people to legally "marry" instead of have a civil partnership will include the provision to marry within your family too, indeed his quote is "we’ve got to make these same-sex marriages available to all. It would lift my worries about inheritance tax because maybe I’d be allowed to marry my son. Why not?"

He is an idiot.

I'll excuse him though because he's an old man and once had his pyjamas blown off by the IRA, that sort of thing is bound to affect your thinking process as you reach your twilight years - I just wish The Mail would leave him alone to sit on his porch and shake a fist at passing buses like all the other cranky old men though.