Getting Civiled ?

What’s in a name? I’m a Brit, a British guy, currently living in England, and we are so lucky in this country, we got gay marriage, well sort of, it’s a civil partnership, where by same sex couples can get hitched, which has pretty much the same laws and protections in law as those whose lover is a member of the opposite sex.

I, along with hundreds of other marched and campaigned for such a law, for our own gay marriage rights, and finally the law was changed and we have our civil partnership. There are some in the ‘gay community’ that think this isn’t right, that damn and condemn anyone or anything that think it is! They want it to be a gay marriage and nothing else will do!

I’m not on that bandwagon, to me we all want equality, but now we’re just arguing over a the name! Ok, so a civil partnership isn’t called marriage, but I know five couples who have done it, every single one of them called it a marriage, all of their guests referred to it a a marriage, they had a wedding reception, wedding cakes, wedding presents, wedding cars, wedding decorations, wedding rings, wedding vows…you see where I’m going with this?

They had, by all accounts, by all reasonable understanding a marriage, they didn’t refer to it as a civil partnership, nor did anyone else. There wasn’t a “Happy Civil Partnership Day’ cards, there was none ‘Civil Partnership’ balloons, there was no telemessages offering congratulations on “Signing of your partnership under The Civil Partnership Act 2004, commencement no 2″ Nope to everyone involved it was their wedding, their gay wedding and celebrated as such.

So what’s in a name? Just because it’s called something different does it not mean the same, surly a rose by any other name and so on?

I feel, it’s more to do with other people preconceptions as to what the ‘term’ marriage actually means, some want to have so much equality that the will not rest until our civil partnerships have been abolished and we have Gay Marriage on the law books, which means they’ll have to wait for a very cold day in hell for that to happen. Others, like me are quite content with the status quo, I like the option to have a ceremony, a partnership of the civil kind, yes I want and strive for equality, but that doesn’t mean I want to copy an archaic, predominately religious ceremony/union which, by all the latest figures are failing and collapsing in greater numbers than ever before!

“Marriage – you can keep it, I’m getting civiled”

Jason Shaw

www.seafrontdiary.com