Hooray ! At last Civil partnerships for heterosexual couples. So what are those who don't believe in marriage going to make of that.

[Fontofnoknowledge]

Just seen this is going to come into law. AIBU thinking that all those (mostly but not exclusively) men , who 'don't believe in marriage ' - will now have to think of another excuse to keep their assets from their partners ..

AynRandtheobjectivist
Frequently, the partners of such people will swallow this bollocks and repeat it because, again, it's more palatable than the idea that their partner simply won't marry them.

This ^
I don't buy the 'patriarchy' bollox for one minute. Just smoke and mirrors. How the hell can it be less patriarchal to cook clean and bare children, then raise them at no cost to the father except your food ? How the hell is that not the ultimate in subjective patriarchy? Trapped in a relationship because HE owns everything and you chose not to have EQUAL shares because of some nonsense ideology.
(Before Ms £150k a year piped up we are NOT talking about you. We are talking about the majority of cohabiting women with little or no income and often no property rights.. )

I think it's as the PP said.. hanging on to or rehashing someone's nonsensical words is often a lot more palatable than admitting you chose a selfish knob to have children with.

'How the hell can it be less patriarchal to cook clean and bare children, then raise them at no cost to the father except your food ?'

I agree with you. I think it's downright daft to have children with a man without being married to him. If DP and I had children, I would have insisted on getting married. I wouldn't have been thrilled about it but would have felt extremely vulnerable without it. However, marriage making good legal and financial sense doesn't mean that it's not a sexist, patriarchal institution. It's the lesser of two evils IMO. I would be much happier with CP as an alternative

If civil partnerships are so "pointless", why do a large minority of gay couples still opt for them in place of marriage?

Imagine you'd always wanted to play golf and there was only one golf club; but you weren't allowed to join because you were gay

Imagine you and millions of other gay men and women who were thus refused any right to play golf at all, lobbied for ages to join that golf club.

And they resolutely refused to let you join their club to allow you to play golf

One day, under so much pressure that it was unfair to deny gay people the right to play golf altogether, they dug their heels in, and said 'OK we'll let you play golf, but we still won't let people like you join our club. We've built you your own special club over there: you use your club and we'll continue to keep you out of ours. You'll broadly have the same rights, but not full equality. And you're very much 'other'

Even if the club FINALLY relented its admissions process to admit gay people as well, it's not unreasonable for some to decide against switching clubs: because even though they'd lobbied to join the mixed club for a long time, by this point they may have decided they didn't want to be a member of a club who'd been so adamant it didn't want you as a member for so long, until very recently

As for looking at our parents - my mother was a child bride, she was forced to drop out of school to marry my father (who was a divorced man several years older). About as patriarchal as you can get - but the marriage was just one of many tools the community and religions involved used to enforce its patriarchal standards, the legal recognition of relationships can also be used as a social tool in other ways (which is why the benefits of it are as they are).

Also in my parents' relationship was my mother having to go through forced pregnancies and births. Should I or others not have children become some women are forced into it? I think - much like the previous mentions of university & government representation - there are better ways to handle issues with the social frameworks of societies than to entirely opt-out and live without those protections and benefits.

To me, the CP for mixed-sex couples is just the Tories nibbling at the edges trying to remain relevant and appear progressive with lines of how now all couples will have the same options which to me shows how out of touch they are. Other than that, I've little thought on it though am enjoying threads like this one to read others experiences on it.

In all fairness, the Tories had no desire to introduce legislation on this point. Wasn't in the manifesto or anything. It was the Keidsteins, the couple whose preference for homophobic connotations over patriarchal led them to pursue the case all the way to the Supreme Court, who forced the issue. It would've been possible for the Tories to do nothing or to abolish CP altogether, admittedly, but this was probably the option least likely to lose them any votes.

I doubt very much that the Tory core cares in the slightest about civil partnerships one way or the other. It'll be interesting to see what the take up is once the initial wave of pent up demand is over.

They have had some of the headbanging wing ostentatiously support straight CP, usually after having been opposed to either gay CP or gay marriage. It might actually play well in the shires that the Tories have now taken a stand against the outrageous discrimination that straight people are subjected to.

I didn't know that, just shows how effective they are! Here in the shires they're far too obsessed with Brexit to pay anything else much attention.

I hope when this becomes law there will be the option to upgrade marriages to Civil Partnerships.

Good luck with that one.

I hope when this becomes law there will be the option to upgrade marriages to Civil Partnerships

Curious how CP would be an upgrade for marriage?

LGBT couples were until pretty recently deprived of ANY rights to legally formalise their relationships. The community lobbied for years for marriage equality

CP was created purely to placate homophobes in parliament, by a cowardly government who were too scared to grant full marriage equality - by creating a new legal status specifically for same sex couples that was immediately othering.

LGBT couples weren't lobbying for CP. They wanted marriage equality. CP was a cowardly compromise.

CP to marriage is in many people's eyes an upgrade, because same sex couples were no longer marginalised into a 'it's like marriage but for gays because the government would rather side with bigots then do what's right'

Marriage equality (at least, a big leap forward) is a big fucking deal, because it stops treating gay couples as 'other'

An opposite sex couple have always been able to get full legal recognition of their relationship. Not having a CP didn't come from having your status recognised as lesser, and wasn't born out of a long for fight for basic rights under the law

CP to marriage can certainly be an upgrade for many same sex couples

I'm curious how marriage to CP would be an upgrade rather than simply a conversion?

It's not like opposite sex couples have been deprived of rights or 'othered' in the eyes of the law

Well I am very pleased about this. I have been living with my oh for donkeys years. We have no children. Due to previous marriages neither of us are really interested in that institution. Our main concern is inheritance tax, and until recently we thought the only option might be marriage, and we have talked about it reluctantly. But now we have a second, more suitable (for us) option. We are not interested in ceremonies or celebrations (most of our families are dead anyway), rings, name changing, honeymoons or gifts, but we will simply be happy with the assurance that when one of us dies, the other won't get stiffed by hmrc and iht.

ceremonies or celebrations (most of our families are dead anyway), rings, name changing, honeymoons or gifts,

You didn't need to wait for CPs to avoid these if you don't like them. Did you sincerely think they are a legal requirement to marry?

Lucisky, I feel exactly the same as you. It's really good news

AynRand, of course I didn't think that. I was just trying to explain my feelings.

Given that you knew that, why wait for a CP if you could have got what you wanted anyway?

I've no objection to CPs for all, I just can't understand why it's not acceptable to avoid rings and name changing with marriage but becomes fine with a CP. If the sexual element of the contract wasn't what put you off, why would you be put off by the things that aren't actually any different between them?

I saw the news yesterday and I’m seriously considering it. I’d want to make sure it does carry same benefits as marriage. We’re currently co-habiting, own a house together and have an 9 month old. For different respective reasons marriage hasn’t felt like the right choice. Am going to raise with partner and see what he thinks. He has a massive family and the expense of a traditional wedding is not feasible. The family fall out from a registry office only do is also not appealing (parents wanting a ‘proper’ ceremony, massive family getting the jump). But if we said civil partnership they’d prob all accept it was us being a bit weird as per usual.

'But if we said civil partnership they’d prob all accept it was us being a bit weird as per usual.'

Same issues for us! We're considering not telling our families at all. We don't really want our families involved for many reasons so it makes sense to just keep it secret. It feels easier to do that with a CP, since so many people seem to take it less seriously than marriage, and there aren't the same expectations about inviting people along

Is it just me who's completely mystified as to why nipping off to the registry office to contract a civil partnership without telling anyone is perceived to be easier than nipping off to the registry office to get married without telling anyone?

It seems that there's broadly two camps

• I want a CP not marriage because patriarchy

• I want CP not marriage because I just want a legal contract and I don't want a wedding / lots of fuss made: there's no reason I couldn't hypothetically do that now with a quick civil marriage at the registry office, that wouldn't bother me, but my family would be upset if I got a marriage contract without a wedding where they'd get to make a fuss, but they probably wouldn't have an issue if we got a CP because in their mind that's just a bit of paper, and in their mind marriage = wedding

Bluelady, I think the issue for some people is that actually getting married under the radar without inviting anyone would cause a huge family row, but they think they could get away with having a CP without their family having a meltdown by spinning it as an admin thing.

Exactly Evil!

They seem totally fucking pointless to me. Just a different for the sake of it statement for people to make! Weddings nowadays can be done so there is absolutely no mention of god/gods or anything so this is completely irrelevant.

Well if that's the case I hope it's useful for those people.

I'm with you, Witch, same contract, different name. As I said, it will be interesting to see what the take up is once the initial wave of pent up demand is over.