Civil partnerships: a right worth fighting for?

When same-sex couples were granted the right to form civil partnerships in 2005, there were those who felt shortchanged: if they were going to enter into a union that has exactly the same legal connotations as marriage, why shouldn’t they be able to call it a marriage? Why should gay couples be excluded from this ancient institution? Nine years later, legislators in England, Scotland and Wales bowed to that argument and extended marriage to gay couples – only for opposite-sex couples to start demanding the right to form civil unions. Soon, they might acquire that right. In response to a case brought by London couple Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan, the UK Supreme Court ruled last week that to deny civil partnerships to different-sex couples was incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. A change in the law is now likely.

I’m all for doings things differently, said Zoe Strimpel in The Sunday Telegraph, but if you are going to take on the Government in a long and expensive legal battle, this seems an odd one to choose. The couple in question say that they want their relationship to be recognised in law, but that their consciences won’t allow them to enter into a marriage, because of the institution’s “heteronormative and patriarchal” associations. Really? Marriage was once “a vehicle for the oppression of women”, but today, they can keep their own names, their jobs, their money. History has taken its course.

Up to a point, said Sirena Bergman in The Independent. You can eschew the white dress, refuse to be “given away”, and quote Simone de Beauvoir instead of the Bible – but you can’t remove “the institution from its roots”. Marriage represents something special and different, agreed the London Evening Standard. That is why we should preserve it, and make it open to all. However, once we accept that the institution has particular religious and cultural connotations, we have also to accept that it isn’t for everyone. Civil partnerships are also problematic, said Alex Hern in The Guardian. To some people, these unions are indelibly associated with a recent homophobic past. They want them abolished altogether. Meanwhile, conservatives don’t want them extended to opposite-sex couples, because they think it would lead to fewer getting married. And they are right: it would. But they should not see that as a threat to the institution. What really erodes the sanctity of marriage is couples embarking on marriage purely to obtain the legal protections it affords, then fighting to make it as “bland and secular” as possible.