As of last week, couples in England and Wales have the choice to convert their civil partnership into marriage, concluding a historic process of changing the law to give same sex couples the right to get married.
The Liberal Democrats were the first party to support same sex marriage and have delivered our promise to couples to allow conversions into marriage to take place. There is now no reason in the law why two people of the same sex cannot be married.
Liberal Democrat Minister for Equalities Jo Swinson said:
It has been wonderful this year to see same sex couples finally able to celebrate their relationship in the way other couples have done for centuries.
This has meant a huge amount of personal joy for gay men and women and their families, and has made our society stronger and fairer.
(Now) we take the final step in implementing this historic legislation, by allowing couples to convert their civil partnership into marriage, if they want to.
Congratulations in advance to all the couples already in civil partnerships who are planning to convert them into marriages in the coming months.
The new legislation is designed to give couples in England and Wales the freedom to choose how they would carry out the conversion of their civil partnership into marriage.
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5 Comments
Sarah Teather will be so mad. I still can’t believe she voted against gay marriage.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9852049/Sarah-Teather-votes-against-gay-marriage-despite-website-declaring-pride-in-policy.html
Good news each small step is another barrier removed…
“It has been wonderful this year to see same sex couples finally able to celebrate their relationship in the way other couples have done for centuries”
Yes, by taking possession of one another. The final step for a liberal should be when all marriages are converted into civil partnerships.
So why is the Government blocking legal recognition of humanist marriages but not say scientology ?
Number 10 blocking humanist marriage.
Elections ‘guru’ Lynton Crosby advises PM humanist marriage is too much of a ‘fringe issue’; official rationale to follow later.
Legally sanctioned humanist marriages in England and Wales are being blocked.
Not as a result of the Parliament-mandated consultation, which over 1500 people replied to in support of legalising humanist marriage, but rather because the Prime Minister’s election strategist, Lynton Crosby, has deemed it a ‘fringe issue’ too far, revealed a senior government source to the Sunday Times.
This is a decision which has devastated couples who were planning to get a humanist marriage in the new year without having to go to the register office to make it ‘official’. The right to have a legal marriage is one which is freely granted to genuinely ‘fringe’ groups like the Church of Scientology and the Aetherius Society, but not yet to humanists in England and Wales, even though we represent a much larger constituency of people. This is also despite the proven popularity of humanist marriages in Scotland, which have already overtaken Catholic weddings to become the third most popular form of marriage there.
This doesn’t mean humanist weddings are ‘banned’ – you can still have a humanist ceremony which perfectly captures your beliefs and values as a humanist, performed by a humanist celebrant who understands and captures your worldview, and who is dedicated to making the ceremony all about your love, your commitment, and to your specifications – but these will continue to not be legally recognised without the additional register office ceremony.
Genuine question – does this mean that couples who have a civil partnership can choose to convert them without going through another ceremony (a free upgrade, as it were) or do they have to go through another ceremony?