No same sex civil partnerships

[Applebite]

AIBU to wonder who would take this to Court? Surely the point of civil partnerships was to recognise FINALLY that gay people have the same rights and needs as hetero people?

Or am I missing something that you get in a civil partnership but not a marriage? I mean, I can see why you might not want to get married, and why you would think there should be more rights for "common law spouses", but would a civil partnership give you anything (or less of something) that marriage wouldn't?

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/21/heterosexual-couple-learn-outcome-civil-partnership-battle-court/

I don't want to be a wife, my 13 year relationship is a partnership based on equality. I don't want to be part of an old fashioned institution that does not reflect my relationship. I don't understand why people are so against it, it's not bothering anyone but it does give me security if anything were to happen to my partner. If civil partnerships hadn't been introduced for same sex couples we would still need some legislation for unmarried opposite sex couples.

I love being a wife but if others want to be a partner then what the hell. We are not religious in the slightest but wanted to get married because we loved each other. I'm not sure if the option of a civil partnership was available if we would have considered that. Can't imagine my hubbie down on one knee saying "will you be my civil partner" but each to your own, I wanted marriage and I wanted a husband.

Perspicacia that's odd, because I had a conversation with the registrar at a wedding I attended a couple of years ago about marriage certs etc and she was quite clear that father's name was on there ( and would have to be taken from your birth cert, or other official doc such as adoption papers ie you couldn't just put anyone down, there had to be documentation). My father wasn't on my birth cert, my parents weren't married (but were in a relationship for over 20 years until my mum died), so I would not be entitled to put his name on a marriage cert. I would have to leave it blank, or unknown. That feels deeply uncomfortable. In Scotland I understand those details are not recorded. It is rightly a moot point anyway in my case - but is just another thing that means marriage really isn't for me.

In my relationship we think of each other as a partnership, as equals. And I think a CP reflects that.

In England, you do not need to take proof of your father's identity when you give your notice of marriage as your British or EU passport is sufficient to prove your nationality and identity. You don't take any paperwork to the ceremony. The registrar will take your word about the identity of your father. Your father's identity is not part of your marriage contract - it is on your certificate for historical/genealogical purposes.
- this is a link to the government's information on the documentation you need to provide - no mention of fathers at all.

If I was living with someone and had children with someone I would like the legal protection that a civil partnership brings. But I don't particularly want to be someone's "wife" or be married. I am straight and would like the opportunity to have a civil partnership

The legal protections are all conferred by marriage. You can get married and not tell anybody, which would mean nobody would ever refer you to as a wife. Or you can get married and insist that you are a partner, not a wife. Why should parliament waste time and money introducing new legislation when we have a perfectly adequate legal solution already? Campaign for a change in social attitudes and divorce if necessary to make marriage what you want it to be.

For those saying they don't want marriage because of the historical background, why are you willing to go for a civil partnership, where the historical background is a refusal to give same sex partners the right to marry?

This, totally. Any idea that civil partnership is based on some kind of value-free ideology that harbours equality is absolute rubbish.

It's all the more ironic that for same-sex couples, the patriarchal past of marriage is totally irrelevant to their circumstances, so this isn't even a 'benefit' of CP they get to enjoy.

Any idea that civil partnership is based on some kind of value-free ideology that harbours equality is absolute rubbish. absolutely and given that the whole point of civil partnerships was to mirror marriage as closely as possible without using the name, I find it difficult to understand how they are free from this patriarchal past.

why are you willing to go for a civil partnership, where the historical background is a refusal to give same sex partners the right to marry?

You can look at it that way if you like if you want to be bloody-minded about it or you can view the introduction of CPs as a positive and progressive step towards the acceptance of gay relationships. There needs to be a system giving legal protection to two people, where women should not be forced to be wives nor men husbands, and CPs fulfil this requirement.

There needs to be a system giving legal protection to two people, where women should not be forced to be wives nor men husbands, and CPs fulfil this requirement. Does there need to be that option? Genuine question. Why? Imagine we had just gone straight for same-sex marriage and never invented civil partnerships, would there ever have been a serious campaign by people saying 'we want a completely new legal regime that mirrors marriage pretty much exactly but has a different name?' That would be bizarre. I can see that we should have equality in the relationships that we do offer so support the campaign to that extent and I can also see that people might want a completely different relationship to be legally recognised. What I cannot understand is why people are so keen to keep identical rights and obligations to marriage but have a different name. The judges in this case were very clear that one option would be for Parliament just to close civil partnerships to new couples so they clearly didn't think that there 'needed' to be any alternative to marriage.

Besides, calling people 'wife' or 'husband' is all social convention. I know plenty of people who has a civil partnership but called their partner wife/husband. Equally lots of people are married but refer to 'partner'.

you can view the introduction of CPs as a positive and progressive step towards the acceptance of gay relationships

This - at the time it was a big step forward.

I admit I've not read the whole thread.

I totally agree with all the people saying civil parnerships were just brought in because the government did not want to legalise gay marriage.

In that sense they were a cop out.

However, they were brought in and some people have them.

So in the interests of fairness straight couples should be eligible to get them too.

Just like the arguments around gay marriage, having straight people able to get civil partnerships does not devalue them for gay people. If anything it strengthens and normalizes them.

Is it just semantics? I am not sure. I don't know how the rights or responsibilities differ. Or the expectations.

In one sense I also feel marriage and civil partnerships are really very similar, but then so is living together in terms of the day to day, it's the rights and responsibilities that change.

Lastly, TreeTop7 mentioned "The legal definition of adultery should be different as well, in the interests of fairness. Currently, adultery only applies to heterosexual sex." I really feel all people in a sexual partnership that is enshrined in law, which is really what both marriage and civil partnerships are about, should have protection about adultery. If your partner has sex with anyone, male or female, and if they are female or male, you should have the right to dissolve the marriage or partnership on that basis, or on any other basis.

Italiangreyhound. On your Q about rights and responsibilities. The very first paragraph of the judgment on this says "A CP has substantially the same legal incidents as marriage except for the name" so that's clearly what the judges deciding the case thought.

The case is here if anyone want to read it but it is quite long and technical.

CP might have been a step forward at the time but that's because the alternative was to have NO legal recognition and it was touch and go for a while whether CPs would even exist at all. I'm sure if people were told in 2004 that by 2014 they would be allowed to actually marry, there wouldn't have been quite so much positivity about the introduction of CPs and more outrage about how ridiculous it was to create it in the first place.

The whole point of CPs was to justify treating people differently based on their sexual orientation. The fact that this heterosexual couple is now moaning that they are being treated differently is what craws.

Imagine we had just gone straight for same-sex marriage and never invented civil partnerships, would there ever have been a serious campaign by people saying 'we want a completely new legal regime that mirrors marriage pretty much exactly but has a different name?

Absolutely - because it was by that time an established part of legislation in many other countries!

I don't understand Knitmeaunicorn. Which countries?

By which I mean which countries had equal marriage and then decided to introduce an identical regime with a different name? Lots of countries used civil regimes before introducing equal marriage (and then quite a few abolished them when they did introduce it) but I hadn't heard of it that way round. I am not claiming to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of all legal regimes so it is a genuine Q!

Dp and I would probably have a civil partnership if it was an option. I don't like the associations of marriage (purple's post sums it up for me), but probably the biggest reason is not wanting (or having the money for) a wedding. It's all very well saying that you could sneak off to the registry office and not tell anyone, but I know our parents would be really upset if we did that, and I wouldn't want to lie to them. Whereas a civil partnership wouldn't have the same connotations for them, as well as us.

Gini "...given that the whole point of civil partnerships was to mirror marriage as closely as possible without using the name, I find it difficult to understand how they are free from this patriarchal past."

I agree with that.

Silverlily " I don't want to be part of an old fashioned institution that does not reflect my relationship." I totally get that but my marriage is an equal partnership and my being a wife and my partner beinga husband doesn't affect that.

I can well imagine many who are not at all married but where one partner lords it over the other, tramples on their feelings, acts like they are in charge. No one need be married for that to happen, nor can anyone be certain it will not happen if not married (unless they are with the right person, with someone who doesn't behave like that).

Personally, I don't think a marriage needs to be about patriarchy. My dear departed dad was delighted to 'give me away' but I don't think in any sense he owned me! Nor did he think that.

Gini99, civil partnerships for opposite sex couples are legal in France and the Netherlands and have been for some time. They are very popular too

Lozza "Civil Partnership has always been Less Than, and it feels like gross privilege not to recognise that."

And yet if straight people do want them, does that not challenge your view that they are less than?

Re "I interviewed a gay man in his 70s back when Civil Partnership legislation was passed who said he would never enter into one because he would forever be legally registered as homosexual and he was scared about who could access that information."

If CPs were now open to all his being in one would not 'out' him at all, since straight people would be able to have them.

I do understand where you are coming from from the history of the CPS and yet I feel the fact they are now desirable to others does seem like a redeeming feature, doesn't it? In what I may consider the true sense of redeem? To buy back into a new meaning in a sense. I am not for a minute doubting the reason they came in was wrong, but redeeming is making something right that was wrong, in one sense, isn't it?

Plus as some folks already have CPs to discontinue them would be dishonouring to them (IMHO).

I think there should be a civil union for siblings and long term house mates (some like some elderly ladies I know who have lived together as friends, both single, for decades). It's about protection for them when one of them dies etc.

But I would not want that called a marriage or a civil partnership as it is not.

I think we need three categories not one or two.

Marriage- Open to opposite and same sex couples

Civil Partnership - Open to opposite and same sex couples

One more, maybe called civil union - for non-sexual but committed living arrangements.

If the third is lumped in with the others I don't think it would appeal to those living together in a non-sexual relationship at all.

Lotta - do you mean the French pacte civil? I didn't think they were a mirror of marriage in the same way as our civil partnerships are? Essentially that is my point. There are very good reasons for want the UK to introduce something like that to give a genuine choice of different legal relationships. What I don't understand is the campaigning for a union identical to marriage with a different name. I can see the equality point but beyond that I think people imagine that civil partnerships give more of a choice of legal relationship than is actually the case. I also think people want that greater choice.

I don't know so much about the Dutch situation. Wasn't the partnership introduced prior to equal marriage and then broadened out?

I liked this article, which recognised that the case was right, but totally tone-deaf: www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2017/02/no-straight-couples-dont-face-marriage-discrimination

They raised £35k to take the case, which is of course their right to do, but I find it odious when same-sex marriage isn't yet legal in NI.

Poor oppressed straight people!

I don't want to be a wife, my 13 year relationship is a partnership based on equality.

Funnily enough, I am a wife and my 13 year marriage is a partnership based on equality.