Six years ago my partner and I got married. Well, that’s how we viewed it at the time. My partner never refers to our ‘civil partnership’. He always talks about ‘our wedding’. So when equal marriage was introduced we sort of scratched our heads and wondered what the point of it all was for us. The whole concept of an ‘upgrade’ seemed so cold, full of logic but with no romance. And in many ways it still does.
John and I have been together for 19 years. 2015 marks our twentieth anniversary together. In some ways we’re total opposites but we have a relationship which works for us. We both have our idiosyncrasies, our little foibles and our differences, but in all that time we have never had a major row or ever (so far as I know) been on the verge of splitting up. After so long, life without each other is almost unimaginable.
So if we already consider ourselves ‘married’ what on earth is the point of ‘upgrading’? So far as I can see, in terms of the law, getting ‘properly married’ would give each of us the same rights over each other’s pension that a straight couple would have. And, er, that’s about it. Or is it? Not quite.
Marriages are solemnised by a prescribed form of words. Civil partnerships just involve signing a legal form, with no words having to be spoken, although they can be if the two people wish it. We did.
For some reason marriages are recorded on paper while civil partnerships are recorded electronically. Don’t ask me why that is. It just is.
Don’t laugh, but you can annul a marriage if at the time of the wedding the other party had a venereal disease. You can’t annul a civil partnership for the same reason. I’d love to have been a fly on the wall when civil servants discussed that one!
If you’re in a straight marriage you can get divorced on grounds of adultery. Both in a civil partnership or a gay marriage you can’t cite adultery as a ground for divorce because the poor civil servants couldn’t decide on a definition of adultery in gay circles. Well, I ask you. Did they need someone to draw a diagram?
I’d love to explain how people who are married get enhanced pension arrangements which people who are in CPs don’t get, but frankly pensions both bore and confuse me. So just trust me on this one. If you’re in a CP and one of you has a rather stonking pension entitlement, for God’s sake go for an ‘upgrade’ or you (or your beloved) may live to regret it!
And that’s, er, it. But of course it’s more than about any of the above, it’s actually about equality, isn’t it? It’s about being seen as equal to our straight counterparts. Except of course, we are not, and maybe never will be – and this is why.
I don’t have any religious convictions, although I am agnostic rather than an atheist. But with my rather traditional, conservative upbringing I respect people who do hold religious beliefs. As a child I was confirmed into the Church of England – I was even a camponologist (a bellringer, for the uninitiated). Well, it was either that or being a choirboy. The least said about that the better. I like going to harvest festivals and to me, a wedding isn’t really a wedding unless it has been conducted in a church. I don’t like the clinical feel of registry offices. There’s nothing romantic about them whatsoever.
But of course, under the Equal Marriage laws, the likes of us can’t get married in a church, even if the church or vicar was prepared to do it. Of course, in our case, where neither of us are believers, they would have a very good case for not marrying us anyway, but there are plenty of gay Christians out there who would dearly love to be able to get married in a church, and it is my strong hope that one day they will be able to do so.
But for us on as yet undecided date in 2015, seven years after our civil partnership, we’re going to get properly hitched. Well, it’s one way of avoiding the seven year itch, isn’t it?
This article first appeared in the December issue of Attitude Magazine
