Can anyone explain this gay marriage malarky to me?

[Rummy]

So, apparently gay marriage is in the news at the moment. However, I've just come to realise; I don't entirely understand what's going on here.

 

I had thought, you had less rights under a civil partnership than under a marriage, and hence people wanted marriage because of this. This isn't the case though, apparently. So...what exactly IS the issue that's so big in the news right now?

Edited December 12, 2012 by Rummy

[Agent Gibbs]

As i side issue can someone explain the whole legal illegal thing in general to me?

 

I thought people were campaigning for the right to be allowed to get married in church's, Mosque's, synagogue etc, and the right wing people/religious people etc providing the counter arguments didn't want this

 

now as i understand the current news; it will be made illegal to get married in a Church of England Church, and Church of Wales church? is that right? as that seems to be exactly what civil rights campaigners didn't want, yet they all support it.

 

I was told that in addition to the above there was some sort of opt in etc and that you'd be allowed to get married in non Coe/Cow religious establishments, there was some sort of opt in and nobody would be forced (which sounds sensible to please all)

but its the whole illegallity for CoE / CoW, that confuses me, nobody seems to complain about it, and that seems to be like a one rule for us one rule for you system.

 

have i missed something?

[Jonnas]

Well, you see Rummy, when a two men or two women love each other very much...

 

Oh wait, you meant a British social issue. Nevermind.

[gaggle64]

Basically, the government has decided to legalise gay marriage so religious communities can provide them for the first time. To do this they've decided to create an "opt-in" system so a religious community can provide same sex marriage if they officially declare to the government that they want to. Supposedly this has been done to "protect religious freedoms" by giving the leadership of each community legal control on this issue over their respective groups, as well legal protections for them from being compelled to provide marriages or being sued for not doing so. The CoE has supposedly told the government it doesn't want to provide these marriages and therefore will not be included in the "opt-in" clause at all, and some inside the Church aren't happy about not even getting the option.

 

If that all sounds like a bit of a clusterfuck, it kinda is.

[Agent Gibbs]

Basically, the government has decided to legalise gay marriage so religious communities can provide them for the first time. To do this they've decided to create an "opt-in" system so a religious community can provide same sex marriage if they officially declare to the government that they want to. Supposedly this has been done to "protect religious freedoms" by giving the leadership of each community legal control on this issue over their respective groups, as well legal protections for them from being compelled to provide marriages or being sued for not doing so. The CoE has supposedly told the government it doesn't want to provide these marriages and therefore will not be included in the "opt-in" clause at all, and some inside the Church aren't happy about not even getting the option.

 

If that all sounds like a bit of a clusterfuck, it kinda is.

 

so i did have it fairly right, and its confusing me basically because its a clusterfuck of a mess? sounds about right, this government has a lot of popularist policies and desires to please all, i did wonder how they'd please all, and it seems "this" is it

[Rummy]

Are some churches already providing the service, though? Like...can't a civil partnership be held/celebrated in a church? I just kinda feel like I don't get the difference other than a legal distinction; marriage for heterosexual couples; civil partnerships for homosexual couples - but both confer the exact same legal rights, right? Is a lot of this all just over a legal distinction?

 

And as Gibbs said, what sort of progress is this if it explicitly states/means no homosexual couple can marry in CoE or CoW?

[Dannyboy-the-Dane]

You could flip that question around: Why do there even need to be a distinction? Why should one group have one thing and the other another?

[gaggle64]

Are some churches already providing the service, though? Like...can't a civil partnership be held/celebrated in a church?

 

No, conceivably you could rent a church building as a privately owned venue for a party, but the actual union would be dealt with by your local registrar. A priest can't provide civil partnerships, as far as I'm aware.

[CoolFunkMan]

so i did have it fairly right, and its confusing me basically because its a clusterfuck of a mess? sounds about right, this government has a lot of popularist policies and desires to please all, i did wonder how they'd please all, and it seems "this" is it

 

It's British democracy, so it's only natural that it's a complete mess!

 

The way I see it, most religious groups aren't going to opt-in anyway due to their beliefs, so it's just going to be yet another stalemate. Or am I missing the point of the opt-in system? It's very confusing...

[Cube]

It's British democracy, so it's only natural that it's a complete mess!

 

The way I see it, most religious groups aren't going to opt-in anyway due to their beliefs, so it's just going to be yet another stalemate. Or am I missing the point of the opt-in system? It's very confusing...

 

Will, you can't exactly force religious places to allow marriages. They can refuse any wedding they want for carrots reasons like it's not their first marriage, they suspect the people aren't religious or other reasons.

 

Although a lot these days don't refuse for reasons like that because marriages get them quite a bit of money.

[Debug Mode]

I think it should be legal but realistically done on a church by church basis. If a church doesn't want to offer such a service, that's fine, but as religion seemingly becomes more business minded, I imagine some churches will be fine and willing to offer such services.

 

Making it legal and the idea that people should accept and carry out the ceremonies seems incredibly ironic to me. But I'm in the same boat as Rummy here, I don't fully understand the big deal. I get the idea that marriage being exclusively for heterosexual couples is discriminatory, but the result of legality will lead to the discrimination of those who wish to follow the teachings of their religion and would not like to host such a ceremony.

 

It's such a fucking weird issue that always sends my brain in circles.

[Rummy]

You could flip that question around: Why do there even need to be a distinction? Why should one group have one thing and the other another?

 

Oh, of course. I put it down however just to due course in law; it isn't easy to rewrite something that's been defined and referred to over the years from what I understand - it needs to be added to; hence the Civil Partnership Act. The good thing is though, legally it confers the exact same rights from what I can tell. The only thing that seems to distinguish them is what they are on the legal paper, and whilst I agree with your question: it seems quite a silly and trivial thing to get het up on.

 

No, conceivably you could rent a church building as a privately owned venue for a party, but the actual union would be dealt with by your local registrar. A priest can't provide civil partnerships, as far as I'm aware.

 

Interesting. I haven't done enough background into this, but I thought I'd seen/heard of churches providing homosexual 'marriages' already, I don't know the intricacies of it though - probably exactly like you said.

 

Will, you can't exactly force religious places to allow marriages. They can refuse any wedding they want for carrots reasons like it's not their first marriage, they suspect the people aren't religious or other reasons.

 

Although a lot these days don't refuse for reasons like that because marriages get them quite a bit of money.

 

And this is the bit that then confuses me; you can't force them to anyway. Would it be that, if what gaggle says is correct, this will allow priests/churches to then marry homosexual couples; something they cannot do at the moment? I guess I can understand how/why that would be important to somebody who wants to marry in a church.

[Shorty]

I don't understand why gay couples want to wedge their way into the church's incredibly archaic guidelines in the first place. Why do gay couples care about persuading an institution to accept them, when they are already at a conflict in the heart of the matter? A gay couple says "we just want what everyone else has", but what everyone else has is a relationship bound by thousand year old teachings from a book that also tells us we're not allowed bowl cuts or shellfish.

 

Perhaps the biggest hypocrisy from the church is how many of the bible's teachings they overlook to allow your average straight couple to get married.

Edited December 13, 2012 by Shorty
I accidentally a word

[bob]

 

I agree with Shorty. If the church want to discriminate, then you either let them, or punish them for discrimination on the whole. If it were an organisation or company doing the same thing, then they would be heavily fined/punished.

 

Same thing with Female Bishops, technically it is illegal to deny someone a job because of their gender. But because it's the church, we'll just let them vote on it, and accept whatever they decide.

[Agent Gibbs]

I don't understand why gay couples want to wedge their way into the church's incredibly archaic guidelines in the first place.

 

A gay acquaintance of mine once said on the subject "why would i want to get married in a place that doesn't want me, by someone being forced to do so? it would be like a black couple forcing someone from the KKK to marry them!"

 

he's atheist anyway, but it was a strange point, but there's a strange logic to it

[Dannyboy-the-Dane]

That being said, there are, conceivably, some gay people who are religious and do genuinely want to have their love recognised by the powers of the faith they subscribe to.

[Rummy]

That being said, there are, conceivably, some gay people who are religious and do genuinely want to have their love recognised by the powers of the faith they subscribe to.

 

Yeah, I guess that's a major driving force behind this. I'm not personally very religious per se - but I can understand how important that could be for someone who is. I'd meant to ask btw, what's the situation on this in Denmark Danny? Didn't the idea of civil partnerships originate there?

 

(forgive me if it's a different Scandinavian country and I've just been massively ignorant)

[Hamishmash]

One of the basic ideas is that while civil partnership might be legally the same as marriage, it is still different.

 

That's why people have stopped using the term "gay marriage" and this is now "marriage equality".

 

It's like "everyone is born equal, but some are more equal than others". Non-straight people often feel that they won't have equality until all the terminology is universal.

 

But there are a lot of other reasons for this.

[Dannyboy-the-Dane]

Yeah, I guess that's a major driving force behind this. I'm not personally very religious per se - but I can understand how important that could be for someone who is. I'd meant to ask btw, what's the situation on this in Denmark Danny? Didn't the idea of civil partnerships originate there?

 

(forgive me if it's a different Scandinavian country and I've just been massively ignorant)

 

I don't know, actually. I know we were the first country to legalise porn, though.

 

Perhaps even more embarrassingly, I wasn't actually 100% sure about the current standing here, only that it had recently been up in the press, so I looked it up on Wikipedia:

 

In October 2011 Manu Sareen, Minister for Equality and Church Affairs in the new Danish government, announced that the government was seeking to legalize same-sex marriage by spring 2012. On 18 January 2012, the government published two draft bills. One bill introduced a gender-neutral definition of marriage and allowed same-sex couples to marry either in civil registry offices or in the Church of Denmark. Existing registered partnerships would have the option of converting to a marriage, while no new registered partnerships will be able to be created. According to the other bill, individual priests would be allowed to refuse to conduct same-sex marriages. Other religious communities would also be allowed to conduct same-sex marriages but would not be compelled to do so. The bills were under consultation process until 22 February 2012.

 

On 14 March 2012, the government submitted both bills to Parliament. The bills were approved on 7 June 2012 and received royal assent on 12 June 2012. The new laws took effect on 15 June 2012. The new legislation was opposed by the Danish People's Party and the Christian Democrats, a religious conservative party, although the latter were not represented in the Danish Parliament at that time.

 

In case you remember me mentioning them before, the Danish People's Party is the Danish equivalent of the British National Party.