Same-Sex Marriage

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8769845/Gays-to-be-...

I didn't know exactly how to title this, so there you have it. This is a big step forward (I consider myself lesbian :-)), and as an aside, as an American I found the following snippet a bit brain-baking. :-P

“During the 2010 election campaign, the Conservatives were the only main party to suggest that they would allow marriage between homosexuals."

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Good News :-)

At last count there were something like 22 openly gay MP's out of 650 total MP's, so a voice is slowly growing in parliament on GLBT issues. As for the newspaper article, it's a good step forward, though the conservatives have taken their sweet time in bringing forward an election campaign committment after going after the pink vote in a big way at the last election (with mixed success). All three main political parties seem to be broadly behind it (one or two high profile idiots apart who will make a disproportionate amount of noise) so it should pass through parliament.

I think it would still make us one of a handful of nations offering nationwide gay marriage even on the current timetable, but we're trailing behind the likes of Canada. It would have been nice to have been first.

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UK Marriage Equality

At least the consultation is a "how" to implement, not "shall we". However, this consultation was supposed to have started by now and I think has been put back twice. The other bit of rumour, which isn't in this article, was that David Cameron has been getting the Conservative votes in line to make sure that this passes. Some of the conservatives are as funny about this as the American Tea-Party movement.

I remember when the Gender Recognition Bill was going through parliament there was one Conservative MP who put forward an amendment which would have meant that a transgendered person could never marry. Thankfully that amendment was not adopted.

One outcome of Marriage Equality should be that a currently married transgender person will not have to get divorced to get a full Gender Recognition Certificate - though that will come out in the white paper. There is a chance that the marriage might stipulate genders, so if a gender marker changes that a remarriage might be needed. This is currently the situation with Civil Partnerships. Say there are two m2f transgender people who have male birth certificates. If they request their gender changed under the GRA, they will have to get their partnership annulled and a new partnership formed from two males to two females. Isn't bureaucracy great?!

Karen

The laws around the world...

The laws around the world - whew re it comes to transsexuals - are all over the map. I understand that in order to get the hormones, in Australia, one has to go on the "sex offenders" list. Across the US, the laws are so all over the place it's hard to know who you are - legally...

That it's even this close - at a national level is encouraging. Would that all of our conservatives would get on the band wagon.

Anne

Similarly...

...Civil Partnerships confer all the legal benefits of heterosexual marriage, but are an entirely different legal structure. So if one partner in a heterosexual marriage has their gender changed under the GRA, they have to go through a legal process to end their marriage and set up a civil partnership in its place. Hopefully this new bill will get rid of that anomaly, so a couple with one TG member can remain married after the GRA process.

Incidentally, there's also two other campaigns in progress: a movement to extend civil partnerships to heterosexual couples - the idea being that a couple with a platonic relationship could get a CP to confer the relevant legal rights on the surviving person in the event of the other's death (among other reasons); and a movement to allow CPs to take place in places of worship.

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