Gay marriage legalised in the UK

This month is all about LBGT history, so what better time is there to literally make history? “The marriage bill” was passed a few days ago 400 votes to 175, which while not perfect is still the good majority. It’s caused great discontent amongst the conservatives, and I’ve heard the phrase “you can oppose same sex marriage and not be homophobic” and while I’d agree it’s not quite on par with hate crime, someone made the good point that many white people who supported the apartheid didn’t consider themselves to be racist.

As a Christian something I’ve been mildly concerned about is those churches who oppose same sex marriage, that they’ll be vilianised. While I fully support same sex marriage, and I imagine my parish priest will be more than happy to officiate the services, it is almost undeniable that the Bible is against homosexuality. While liberal churches like my own take a more modern view of such things, I don’t think it means a witch hunt should be started on those Christians who are more traditional. I’m not saying its right to be homophobic, but I don’t think anyone member of the church should be pressured into doing something against their beliefs. I hope in time the more conservative churches will change their views though.

Part of the bill is that:

 (1)A person may not be compelled to—

(a)undertake an opt-in activity, or

(b)refrain from undertaking an opt-out activity.

(2)A person may not be compelled—

(a)to conduct a relevant marriage,

(b)to be present at, carry out, or otherwise participate in, a relevant marriage, or

(c)to consent to a relevant marriage being conducted, where the reason for the person not doing that thing is that the relevant marriage concerns a same sex couple.

This means that churches will be under less legal pressure than they would have otherwise, which I think is pretty nifty, if boringly worded  (at least I think that’s what it means, someone please correct me asap if I’m hideously wrong).

So, it will take a while for all the relevant changes to be made, but keep your eyes peeled for some glorious LBGT weddings :D

Lots of love,

Todostrieb 

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

"That's so gay!!"

What do I think about ? I'm not quite sure. Bad Eli, you should have thought about this before you started this post.

But you see reader, I am going to Japan tomorrow, and as I have yet to obtain my return ticket, I have more pressing matters: how am I supposed to survive being away from my beloved Mel for 2+ months?? 

Even though I am LGBT, and have heard the choo-choo of the gay marriage train and parade pass by, right in front of my eyes, I haven't contemplated marriage. 

Right now, I am queer. This means I don't know whether I shall marry a guy, a girl, a MTF,  a FTM, a gender-queer person etc, or whether I will marry at all. To be honest, as a child coming from a broken family, marriage doesn't seem too exciting for me, and walking down the isle in a poofy dress seems sickening and scary. But I wouldn't mind babies, they always seem cute... damn my maternal instincts!!


I currently have Mel, and we have often joked about getting married, and having a baby  "François", and maybe others, simply because it's fun to fantasise sometimes and play house/happy-families. However, I will not lie, I am ignorant about whether it is even legal to get married in the UK, and what the difference between a "Civil Partnership" and a "Marriage" is. 

According to the great internet:

"Civil partnerships are a legally recognised union between two people of the same sex...Couples who become partnered will have the right to exactly the same legal treatment across a range of matters as a married couple would expect." 

"A partnership is formed when the second of the two parties signs the partnership papers. This is not necessarily a public ceremony or even an event that happens at the same time as the first signature.....In contrast, a marriage happens when the partners exchange spoken words and also sign the register."

There is also some interesting information in these links:


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/17/gay-marriage-civil-partnerships

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/4497348.stm
http://www.theweddingcommunity.com/304/Expert-Advice/Article/The-Differences-Between-Civil-Partnerships-and-Marriages


I shall have to do my homework on the subject and get back to you. Right now I have to pack for Japan... (I shall already be there when this comes out..).


Eli x

Heartbreak Hotel

Gay marriage doesn’t bother me; it’s just the marriage part I don’t like. It seems like a binding promise to love someone forever, I don’t think it’s fair to make promises you can’t keep. Almost one in two marriages end in divorce nowadays and it probably reflects that it’s now socially acceptable to change partners, instead of being stuck with the man your parents chose for you for life.

I can see that marriage is more like a guarantee, it might be a more stable environment to raise and family, and from that point of view I think that gay marriage should be legal, they have just as much right to raising a family as any other couple.

It also seems weird to me that laws can be passed about religion, it seems like the two should be separate, my vote is we get rid of any legislation about marriage and let the open minded priests do whatever they like. How can a government interfere with God's will? If there is a god that is.

I don’t want to get married, mainly because I don’t want kids, they’re evil little buggers. But it also seems like a lot of effort, let’s say hypothetically I thought I could love someone until the end of time, why do I need to stand up in church in a frilly white dress and tell my nearest and dearest that? If you’ve already lived with and loved someone for a number of years, what does it change?

Let’s say I change my mind, which is a distinct possibility, I’d go to Vegas and get an Elvis look alike to marry me in jeans and a t-shirt. Then spend my honey moon playing reckless games of poker and drinking fancy cocktails.

All homojournalists will be expected to accompany me on this venture

Todostrieb

Where You go I Will go, Where you Stay I Will Stay

I'm a good little C of E girl. I bell ring and I sing in the church choir. Every year I get paid to help out at several weddings, here is some of what I have learnt.

1. The reading will always be ‘Love is patient, love is kind....’
2. The priest only prepares one sermon, which they will use for every single wedding in their entire career.
3. Brides wearing heels need to watch the floor; old churches have heating grates that like to eat people.
4. One of the hymns will always be Jerusalem.
5. They will always be between a man and a woman.

Points 1-4 I'm resigned to. Although, there’s a lovely passage in Ruth about what Love is, if anyone straight fancies breaking up the routine for me.  It’s point 5 I have an issue with.

My church has several gay members of the congregation and gay clergy men. One of these charming men came with me to a massive C of E conference to meet our local bishop. At this conference we were mixed up with strangers and split into groups. My group was lovely; we built a church out of pipe-cleaners and started brainstorming about how to bring the church forward. Unluckily for my gay clergy man, he sat next to a pillock who went on the entire time about how it was the churches responsibility to ban homosexuality. Had it been me, I would have dragged the homophobe up to the bishop by his ear, and demanded that the bishop pray for his immortal soul, or read aloud pretty much any of the new testament.

My priest (a woman if anyone is curious) once said to me that she would rather be punished when she died for supporting LGBTQ love, than be punished for condemning it. This seemed to her like good enough reason not to be a bigot. In contrast, one of the gay members of the congregation received a death threat from another member of the congregation, because he had been seen in public with his partner. If anybody is wondering what happened, the threatening letter was handed over to the police by my previous priest and the member of the congregation dealt with accordingly.

As an obviously, less than straight member of the congregation, I find these entire goings on quite concerning. What I’m trying to get across with these anecdotes, is that clearly the church is conflicted. The truly dedicated Christians, in my experience are the ones who will leave the judging to God. They are the ones who give the homeless- even though they may be alcoholic drug addicted whores- money on the street. They are the ones who can ignore passages of the bible that tell us to stone the unfaithful wives, those who’ve had sex before marriage and homosexuals. This has been my experience, but perhaps it is not true for everyone.

When we studied terrorism in philosophy, an interesting point was raised. Terrorists believe what they are doing is right, some believe they are doing the work of their God or Gods. But what if these extremists are misinterpreting their religion, how can we ever know if what they are doing is right? The bible, or any other religious text, doesn’t change depending on who reads it or when we read it. It’s a text or text that should be timeless. To claim it means one thing is to lessen that. To claim objectively that it means we should kill certain groups of people, or condemn them, is to restrict the religious text's applications to just that.

Leviticus, the chapter of the bible which speaks most famously about homosexuality, is also the chapter of the bible which condemns tattoos, shellfish and pork. Many homophobes forget that. I have always believed that the bible has these things in more as health warnings than anything else. I appreciate that Judaism upholds some of these laws very literally, but as a Church of England member, I have come to understand that eating shellfish in the times of the bible would have resulted in food poisoning. Gay sex, even now, has more health risks associated with it than straight sex. Some of this is a social stigma, but part of it is practicality. Back in the good old days, anal tearing would’ve killed you. Though, granted, the fear mongering and death penalty does seem a very extreme warning.

So you can see that religion has many different interpretations. My view is that good Christianity means not judging unless you are actually Jesus. So you can probably put 2 and 2 together and realise that as a bisexual I must support gay marriage. I’m lucky enough to live in England, which means that if I want I can get married in a registry office, and all the legalities of a normal marriage will apply. But to me, lack of a church wedding is the same as saying that our relationship isn’t worthy to be blessed in God’s house. A wedding is standing in church with the people you love and making a vow with God’s blessing. Why should that be any different if who you love isn’t a member of the opposite sex?

Wow, this has been a long post; I guess it’s something I feel strongly about. I used to picture myself married to a guy in my head. Though now I think that was more social conditioning than anything else. I once had a dream that Eli and I were getting married, and we had to find a church that had an isle wide enough for both our wedding dresses.  I’m worried that one day soon I’ll want to marry someone I love and be told ‘No, you can go to a registry office, God doesn’t want you here’.  

My God is a God of Love. Why should LGBTQ love be excluded from that?

Have fun,

Mel

xxx