Monty Python, the Australian Open and same-sex marriage
By Peter Saunders, CMF
[...] This raises the question as to why some gay rights activists are seemingly unable to accept that marriage, as a special kind of relationship, is available for some people but not for others.
Introducing ‘same-sex marriage’ would confer almost no additional legal rights: same-sex couples have these already thanks to the Civil Partnership Act 2004. The President of the Family Division has even described civil partnerships as conferring ‘the benefits of marriage in all but name’.
There are differences in English law, between a marriage and a civil partnership, but these differences focus not on the rights they confer, but on the genders of the partners, the procedure and place where the partnership is formed, and the roles of consummation and adultery in making and breaking the relationship. This is because they are different types of relationship.
So when asked this week by Archbishop Peter Smith what additional rights marriage would give same sex couples that they did not have already under the Civil Partnership Act, Home Secretary Theresa May was not surprisingly unable to give an answer.
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