So what does marriage actually mean?

I share Todostrieb's opinion on marriage as a whole; I know more ex-married people than I do married people, my parents should be included in this statistic, and I'm not sure if I'll ever get married for a number of reasons, chief among them has to be the lack of boyfriend to propose to (me). Despite that, I'm always one for a party, and what else is a wedding if not the excuse to get drunk and/or laid? As such, I clearly do not need to point out that I am completely for gay marriage, or as I like to call it, marriage. I found this pie chart, which kind of weighs up the pros and cons quite nicely.

It really is that simple.

When the UK legalised Civil Partnerships for same-sex couples, I was probably too young to have had an opinion - at least, an opinion which meant anything. For those of you who don't know what a Civil Partnership means, it's essentially exactly the same as marriage in all but name, and you can only have one if you're gay. To any poor heterosexual people out there (I'm looking at Miu), as it stands you can only get married or you can not get married, if you'd rather have a civil partnership because it sounds less binding, tough.

That's the problem I have with marriage legislation in this country at the moment. While a Civil Partnership and a Marriage are exactly the same thing in all but name (both give you the same rights in the eye of the law, supposedly), one sounds less impressive than the other, and the more impressive sounding one is also better understood than the other. If Miu and her boyfriend were to spontaneously announce "We're getting married!", then everybody would celebrate and throw a party because marriage is a universally understood term. If I were to announce that my currently non-existent boyfriend and I are "getting partnered"... I can just picture the underwhelming response and the shy "what the fuck does that mean" response that is bound to meet us.

Told you so.

And so we've arrived in a situation where the terms Civil Partnership and Marriage have been clouded by the public's ignorance of their meaning, and who they're for. As far as I'm concerned, as long as the big cheeses in Government call something like marriage one thing for LGBTQ people and another for everybody else, then they will never be truly equal, and that is why marriage should become legal for gay people and civil partnerships become available to straight people, if they want them. I know there's a whole other debate about religion and gay marriage which Mel went into quite nicely - I must admit that some of the things coming out of some religious people's mouths (or is that arses?) have been frankly outrageous, but I suppose that it just highlights the blatant homophobia which runs through parts of the church. What they can't seem to understand is that what the government is proposing is that all civil venues (like registry offices etc) must perform a gay wedding if called upon to do so; religious venues do not. That's not redefining marriage, nor is it damaging marriage - if I remember correctly, Henry VIII created the Church of England to enable him to divorce one of his many wives, unless I'm seriously old-fashioned, divorce seems more damaging to the 'institute' of marriage than allowing more people to actually get married....

Sorry, that turned into a bit of a rant. I will finish by saying that I have to admit that a Tory-led government were the last people I expected to hold a consultation on the subject, let alone try and legalise equal marriage before the next election, so even if they fail in everything else (tuition fees, anybody?), I suppose I'll have some sympathy for Cameron and Clegg when they get kicked out of Downing Street in May 2015.

On a completely unrelated note, I'm helping my mum move to Germany next week, so I won't be around to post next Friday - if any of you lovely people would like to submit something to post in my place, please feel free to do so!
Rory