BY Peter J. Smith
LONDON, July 31, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The United Kingdom’s High Court today has refused to overturn the kingdom’s traditional definition of marriage for two British lesbians, who demanded that the court grant legal status to their Canadian same-sex “marriage”. The High Court ruled that the plaintiffs, Sue Wilkinson and Celia Kitzinger, faced an “insurmountable hurdle”, and that under British law their “relationship” could only be recognized as a civil union.
Sir Mark Potter, the President of the High Court Family Division, rendered the High Court’s decision against Ms. Wilkinson and Ms. Kitzinger, saying that by “longstanding definition and acceptance” the traditional British definition of marriage refers only to a union between a man and a woman for the purpose of begetting and raising children. For this reason Sir Potter said that Britain would only recognize their union as a civil union under the Civil Partnership Act of 2004, but would not grant them the legal status of “marriage”.
“It perpetuates discrimination and it sends out a message that lesbian and gay marriages are
inferior,” said Ms. Wilkinson according to the BBC, finding the High Court’s upholding of traditional marriage “insulting and discriminatory”. She and Ms. Kitzinger had demanded that their “marriage” be recognized as valid under the UK Human Rights Act and the European Convention of Human Rights.
Ms. Wilkinson and Ms. Kitzinger plan to file an appeal. The couple had previously vowed on taking the matter all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, if necessary, to force the United Kingdom to confer legal status on their “marriage”.
“This judgment will not stand the test of time” Ms. Wilkinson warned, “We are looking forward to the day when there is full equality of marriage, not just for us but for all same-sex couples”.
Ms. Wilkinson and Ms. Kitzinger, both British subjects, had gone to Canada in 2003 in order to be married under “Canadian law”.
The case only further underscores the reality that Canadian law has acted as a launching pad for assaulting the marriage laws of other nations. Canada does not require foreign nationals to become citizens in order to “marry”, and homosexual activists have attempted to useÂtheir Canadian same-sex “marriages” to force other sovereign entities to accept “homosexual marriage”.
Richard Hogwood, a British family lawyer at Speechly Bircham revealed to The Times Online that the case, if successful, would have strengthened the hand of homosexual activists pushing for same-sex “marriage” in Britain: “Had Ms Kitzinger and Ms Wilkinson, who eschew the notion of civil partnership, been successful in their claim, the argument for same-sex marriage in the UK would have been invested with a great deal more force and threatened to make civil partnerships redundant”.