Let churches hold gay weddings, says Miliband

[cbayer]

Churches and other religious institutions should be free to stage gay weddings, Ed Miliband said today.

11:58AM BST 27 Sep 2012

The Labour leader backed Government plans to legislate for same-sex marriages as a sign that Britain is a "modern country".

However, he went further than ministers in calling for the right to hold same-sex marriages to be extended to faith groups as well.

In a video recorded for the Out4Marriage campaign, he said: "I think, whether you are gay or straight, you should be able to signify your commitment, your love with the term 'marriage', and so the Labour Party provides its wholehearted support for this campaign.

"We will be pushing the Government to get on with the process for legislating for equal marriage, and we'll also be saying to them, where faith groups want to provide that opportunity for gay couples as well as straight couples, they should be able to do so.

more, including video, at link

[dmallind]

1. I am obviously out of touch; I thought they already could

While it happened long after I left, I thought gay marriage was passed in the UK long ago. Hell my nephew and his bf were considering it a couple years back. I suppose I could have missed the fact that these weddings had to be civil not church affairs, but it seems rather strange even then forbidding the CofE to marry them. Giving individual vicars/bishops the choice maybe, but not sure why the ban.

Needless to say UK laws are not as much of a focus as they once were for me, so I can see why I got it wrong - but surprised I missed something so major.

[cbayer]

2. I also thought that this issue was water under the bridge in the UK.

Hopefully it is soon to be resolved.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. What was already passed was civil partnership, not marriage

While the rights and responsibilities are almost identical in British law, it is given a different name (and thus it is not recognised as a marriage in other jurisdictions that do recognise same-sex marriages made in their own). People may talk about it as a wedding and 'marriage', but legally, it has been kept separate.

And, yes, they had to be done by a registrar, not as a religious ceremony, at first. I never saw why they said that; it's less than a year that a new law allowing the ceremony in religious buildings came into effect. It is now up to each religious organisation to perform them or not (the CofE does not).

The proposal now is to have same-sex marriage too; but, for some reason, the government that got the rule about allowing religions to perform civil partnership ceremonies now thinks it should forbid them performing same-sex marriage ceremonies. It doesn't make sense; it's probably pandering to the bigoted Tory lords who threaten to block such acts.

[DavidL]

4. Thanks for the details about this

I knew about civil partnerships. But I had no idea where actual gay religious marriages stood in the UK these days. Few people where I spend my time talk about this at all, and my gay friends are in London and really don't care about what the government is doing most of the time.

[dmallind]

5. makes sense (well not really - it obviously doesn't, but I get the idea). Thanks! nt