News

Tuesday July 20, 2010


Gay “Marriage” in UK before Next General Election

By Hilary White

LONDON, July 20, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A senior member of Britain’s new coalition government has promised to change the current law to allow homosexual partners to solemnise their liaisons as “marriage.” Despite recent denials by Prime Minister David Cameron, Simon Hughes, the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, the party that forms half the coalition with the Conservatives, promised “gay marriage” by the time of the next general election.

In an interview with Yoosk, an open forum discussion website, Hughes said, “It would be appropriate in Britain in 2010, 2011, for there to be the ability for civil marriage for straight people and gay people equally.”

“That’s different of course from faith ceremonies which are matters for the faith communities … they have to decide what recognition to give. The state ought to give equality. We’re halfway there. I think we ought to be able to get there in this parliament.”

A public consultation will take place, he said, to bring the question of homosexual civil partnerships to the “next level.”

Despite subsequent denials by Cameron, a senior member of the Tory inner circle, Nick Herbert, the Conservative Party’s openly homosexual Shadow Secretary of State for Environment said in the lead-up to the election that his party considers it “vital” that the institution of marriage be extended to “same-sex relationships” and that homosexual partners should be allowed to adopt children as married couples.

At the same time, Lynne Featherstone, the Lib Dem equalities minister, has said the Coalition is considering allowing religious ceremonies for same-sex couples undertaking civil partnerships. The Civil Partnership Act currently prohibits the use of religious services during the secular ceremony, but some religious groups, such as the Society of Friends (Quakers) have requested that it be adjusted to allow homosexual partnerings to be undertaken with religious trappings in their meeting halls.

Featherstone said that “religious readings, music and symbols” could be incorporated into the ceremonies. Parliament has already recently removed the bar on same-sex unions being conducted in churches and other places of worship through an amendment to Labour’s Equality Act.

Chris Bryant, the ex-Labour minister and former Anglican minister who once posed in his underpants on a dating website called Gaydar, said that such a move would necessarily lead to the abolition of the distinction between legal marriage and civil partnerships.

Allowing religious elements into homosexual civil ceremonies, Bryant said, would create an “unusual situation” in the law in which same-sex partners can include religious elements into civil partnerships but heterosexuals entering into civil marriages cannot.

Read related LSN coverage:

Cameron’s U.K. Conservatives Promise to Consider Gay ‘Marriage’ in Equalities Manifesto

https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/may/10050509.html