Marriage in the UK - and incremental change

The UK government, through Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone, announced on February 17, 2011, that they plan to change the law to allow civil partnership ceremonies to be performed in churches and places of worship.

In the UK 'civil partnerships' only apply to same-sex couples. Back in 2005, when the UK Labour government legalised 'civil partnerships', the 'ceremonies', or signing of documents, were ONLY allowed to be held in secular venues - they weren't allowed to be held in churches.

Now, less than six years later, the government is changing the law!

Although the Church of England has said they will not allow their churches to be used for these ‘ceremonies’, a year ago some Anglican bishops in the House of Lords were supporting the government's move to allow the civil partnership ceremonies to be held in churches (read report)! The parliament apparently voted to agree to this change prior to the Coalition gaining power - now it is to be implemented.

Of course, this is another incremental change towards ‘gender neutral’ marriage.

But the Coalition government, pressured by the Liberal Democrats, is going further. . .
The Conservatives only hold power with the support of the Liberal Democrats. The government's Liberal Democrats Equalities Minister has also announced that the government is planning to consider changing the definition of marriage itself... they will consult on whether marriage should be opened up to homosexuals - and whether heterosexual couples can have 'civil partnerships'!

Of course, the fact that eight UK couples are currently taking cases to the European Court of Human Rights challenging both of these issues may also be a factor!
Media report on these developments 
Gay marriages and heterosexual civil partnerships may soon be welcomed, The  Guardian, 17 Feb 2011. 

Here in Australia. . .

Just like the Conservatives have been influenced by their small Coalition partner, the Liberal Democrats, here in Australia Labor is being influenced by the Greens, who fully support same sex 'marriage'.
Remember - the Greens will hold the balance of power in the Senate from July!

Incremental change

In every country that has homosexual 'marriage' there has been an INCREMENTAL process of gaining one form of recognition, which has been followed by homosexual activists continuing to push for more rights until they finally gain 'marriage'.

They say so themselves...

Jenni Millbank, a homosexual activist and Professor of Law at the University of Technology Sydney, wrote the following in Same-sex Families in 2005... (source - quoted in NSW Parliamentary Library Briefing Paper, P 41.)

“No country anywhere in the world has passed laws going from absolutely no form of same-sex relationship recognition directly to same-sex marriage. Rather, over a period of many years, a series of changes have built incrementally on one another.  Generally progress has gone along the following sequence: decriminalisation of gay sex, implementation of anti-discrimination protections, some limited recognition of relationships either through de facto relationship recognition or limited registration systems, and then through one or more stages a move to broader relationship recognition, then (usually) some parenting recognition, then a status similar to marriage but called something else such as ‘civil union’ or ‘registered partnership’, and then, some years later, marriage.”