Is the wedding industry about to wake up to equal marriage?

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Claire Gould

On Thurs­day the 15th of March the gov­ern­ment began a con­sul­ta­tion into equal civil mar­riage in Eng­land and Wales. It intends to change the cur­rent law so that same sex civil mar­riage on non-religious premises will become legal from 2015. David Cameron beamed and announced, “I sup­port gay mar­riage because I’m a Con­ser­v­a­tive”. Oh shut up. (But more on that later…)

Reac­tion in the media has been var­i­ously wel­com­ing, crit­i­cal and out­raged. Reli­gious organ­i­sa­tions have lashed out. Equal rights cam­paign­ers are ask­ing for more. But the wed­ding indus­try has been uncom­fort­ably quiet on the sub­ject. Polit­i­cal dis­cus­sion doesn’t seem to impact on our day-to-day con­ver­sa­tion. Why?

The voice of our indus­try has always been print media: the monthly and bi-monthly wed­ding mag­a­zines. With the huge pop­u­lar­ity of wed­ding blogs, we’re no longer restricted by print lead times: we can dis­cuss the pol­i­tics affect­ing mar­riage as they tan­gle around us — and by hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion, we can make a difference.

It’s time for the wed­ding indus­try to talk about equality

Wed­ding mag­a­zines have always run to print sched­ules: planned months in advance, edi­to­r­ial finalised with a hand­ful of weeks to go; print­ing and then dis­tri­b­u­tion over sev­eral weeks. It’s made top­i­cal debate impos­si­ble — by the time the mags land on the high street the impor­tant dis­cus­sions have been and gone.

Wed­ding blogs are instant. They have mul­ti­ple times the read­er­ship of the print mag­a­zines. No lead times means no bar­ri­ers to top­i­cal dis­cus­sion: when some­thing as big as the con­sul­ta­tion on equal civil mar­riage hits the head­lines wed­ding blog­gers can join the debate.

The wed­ding blog­gers are now the most influ­en­tial and respected voices in the indus­try. If we talk about this, oth­ers will fol­low — and the gen­er­a­tion for whom the debate on equal mar­riage is most impor­tant will listen.

So why all the uproar about gay mar­riage last week?

  1. The gov­ern­ment plans to change the law so that same sex cou­ples can legally have a civil mar­riage. This means gay cou­ples can be mar­ried in any Eng­lish or Welsh wed­ding venue which holds a licence for civil cer­e­monies. The key dif­fer­ence is the ter­mi­nol­ogy: mar­riage is an emo­tion­ally loaded word. Pre­vi­ously civil part­ner­ships weren’t enough for many who sim­ply wanted to be legally recog­nised as a mar­ried couple.
  2. Same sex mar­riage on reli­gious premises will still be ille­gal. Cur­rent law per­mits civil part­ner­ships on reli­gious premises but not same sex reli­gious mar­riage. This won’t change. Gay cou­ples won’t have the choice to be mar­ried in church; churches won’t have the option of mar­ry­ing gay cou­ples on their premises. (And yet the Church of Eng­land and Roman Catholic churches have stormed into this debate like rag­ing toddlers.)
  3. Het­ero­sex­ual cou­ples still won’t be allowed civil part­ner­ships. It seems like a lesser issue, but this only high­lights the dis­crim­i­na­tion we’re fac­ing. One rule for every­one regard­less of sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion would be true equal­ity, would it not? In the Nether­lands straight cou­ples can opt for a civil part­ner­ship and since the law there was changed, two thirds of cou­ples do. This is all about choice — and our gov­ern­ment aren’t will­ing to yield to us the free­dom to choose.

Why this pro­posal won’t bring true equality

Mar­riage is about two peo­ple in love. “We’re mar­ried!” speaks of deep love and com­mit­ment, of a wider cel­e­bra­tion of a lov­ing rela­tion­ship within cir­cles of friends and fam­ily, and of recog­ni­tion within the wider community.

The pro­pos­als to legalise same sex mar­riage have been wel­comed by equal rights cam­paign­ers — but the changes just don’t go far enough. We’ll still be in a sit­u­a­tion where gay cou­ples are allowed to do one thing and straight cou­ples are allowed another. It’s not fair, and it’s point­lessly con­fus­ing as well.

Why not one law for all? Any cou­ple should be allowed to choose between a civil mar­riage or a civil part­ner­ship. The gov­ern­ment has com­plete power over this — the only bar­rier is the law.

By pro­claim­ing his sup­port of gay mar­riage David Cameron gives the impres­sion he sup­ports same sex reli­gious mar­riage, but this is not true. The gov­ern­ment is firmly set against reli­gious mar­riage for gay cou­ples. Per­haps it fails to see the dis­crim­i­na­tion or homo­pho­bia in this stance or per­haps it doesn’t have the guts to make this change to the law.

Some reli­gious organ­i­sa­tions sup­port gay mar­riage in church. The Quak­ers, Uni­tar­i­ans and Lib­eral Judaism [source] would all wel­come gay cou­ples who wanted to get mar­ried in their churches — if our gov­ern­ment would only change the law so this wasn’t ille­gal. Within the major church organ­i­sa­tions there are plenty who would sup­port gay mar­riage in church — but their lead­ers say no.

If our gov­ern­ment was really so forward-thinking and so wel­com­ing to same sex mar­riage, then they’d have to change the dis­crim­i­na­tory law against reli­gious gay marriage.

Why same sex reli­gious mar­riage isn’t even being considered

In a coun­try where reli­gion is rapidly los­ing its grip on the pop­u­lace it strikes me as strange  that the gov­ern­ment won’t address the fact that same sex mar­riage in church is ille­gal. No one is sug­gest­ing the law should force priests to marry gay cou­ples. But to deny churches and cou­ples alike the option is short­sighted, old fash­ioned and homophobic.

And yet crit­ics have sug­gested that the gov­ern­ment is cowed by out­spo­ken reli­gious lead­ers — the likes of Arch­bishop Dr Rowan Williams and the lead­ers of the Church of Eng­land — whose dis­crim­i­na­tory views on same sex reli­gious mar­riage are embraced by the Daily Mail and ped­dled to the gen­eral pub­lic like 1p But­lins hol­i­day offers. It’s because of the per­ceived influ­ence of reli­gious lead­ers that our gov­ern­ment doesn’t dare change the law pro­hibit­ing same sex mar­riage in church. So let’s look at the church’s response over the last few days.

The church on civil mar­riage for same sex couples

The church shouldn’t inter­fere in this con­sul­ta­tion process. The gov­ern­ment is propos­ing legal civil mar­riage for same sex cou­ples. It doesn’t even affect the church! Their ‘moral’ argu­ment that mar­riage — whether reli­gious or civil — should not be allowed for gay cou­ples is homo­pho­bic. The church is shin­ing its own very unpleas­ant light onto the dis­cus­sion about gay marriage.

On Sun­day the 11th of March two top bish­ops issued a let­ter to be read to con­gre­ga­tions in all Catholic churches, telling parish­ioners that mar­riage should be between a man and a woman, and “intended for the pro­cre­ation and edu­ca­tion of chil­dren”. They described the pro­pos­als for same sex civil mar­riage as “rad­i­cal” — and they didn’t even try to make it clear that the government’s pro­pos­als only cover civil marriage.

In the Huff­in­g­ton Post equal rights cam­paigner Peter Tatchell explained,

“As a con­se­quence, many Catholics left church last Sun­day believ­ing that the gov­ern­ment was going to com­pel priests to marry les­bian and gay couples.”

“I know this because after Sun­day Mass I inter­viewed peo­ple com­ing out of London’s pre­mier Catholic church, West­min­ster Cathe­dral. Three quar­ters of the peo­ple I spoke to were under the impres­sion that the arch­bish­ops were talk­ing about same-sex mar­riages in churches. They thought the gov­ern­ment was going to force unwill­ing reli­gious insti­tu­tions to marry same-sex couples.”

Equal­i­ties Min­is­ter Lynne Feath­er­stone has crit­i­cised church lead­ers’ reac­tions, saying,

“It adds noth­ing to the debate. It inflames. On these issues, we have a respon­si­bil­ity in lead­er­ship posi­tions to make sure we don’t fan the flames of homo­pho­bia. I totally respect all of the reli­gious views and under­stand they are strong and gen­uinely felt. But to use such inflam­ma­tory lan­guage does not help the debate and does not help their cause.”

When the Arch­bishop of York claimed the gov­ern­ment couldn’t change the law on mar­riage with­out the approval of reli­gious lead­ers her reply was sim­ply, “My under­stand­ing is that Par­lia­ment can leg­is­late to do what it wishes.”

I’m not alone in think­ing the church should stop inter­fer­ing so neg­a­tively in an issue which is none of their damn business.

The church on reli­gious mar­riage for same sex couples

The gov­ern­ment messed up by not address­ing reli­gious gay mar­riage in this pro­posal. Church lead­ers are shout­ing at us any­way. “Mar­riage is for a man and a woman!”… “We invented it, for God’s sake!” the priests cry. Well no, you didn’t. You don’t own the con­cept of mar­riage. If you want to start an argu­ment, let’s dis­cuss same sex mar­riage on your premises while we’re here, shall we? (Civil part­ner­ships on reli­gious premises are already legal, after all.)

Church lead­ers have loud voices — but are we really listening?

It’s no secret that the aver­age age of both priests and con­gre­ga­tions is head­ing sky­ward (no pun intended). Sta­tis­tics pre­dict the per­cent­age of UK church­go­ers will be below 5% by the year 2020. Church­go­ers may lis­ten to their priests’ views on gay mar­riage in church — most may agree. But they’re a shrink­ing minor­ity. (Con­sider the ‘offi­cial esti­mate’ from this White­hall source: 6% of the UK pop­u­la­tion are gay.)

The media lis­ten to out­spo­ken church lead­ers because con­tro­versy sells papers. Arch­bish­ops are no strangers to sound­bites and they know how to court media atten­tion. Daily Mail read­ers may not flinch as priests use words like “grotesque” in their retal­i­a­tion against these pro­pos­als — but debate on the Inde­pen­dent, Tele­graph and Guardian web­sites tells a far more enlight­ened story.

Per­haps it’s enter­tain­ing to see the men in funny hats cry out against equal­ity in mar­riage. From a nation beguiled by bad X Fac­tor audi­tions, the fact we’re giv­ing blink­ered bish­ops news­pa­per space doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily mean we agree with their point of view.

In much the same way as Cab­i­net Office Min­is­ter Fran­cis Maude pointed out the Con­ser­v­a­tive party would be “une­lec­table” if it stuck to “backwards-looking social atti­tudes”, I believe the Church should think care­fully about alien­at­ing a younger con­gre­ga­tion through big­otry and homophobia.

Writ­ing for the Daily Tele­graph, John Bing­ham said, “The Church of Eng­land hinted that the pro­pos­als could under­mine its posi­tion as the estab­lished Church”. This is an impor­tant point which flips neatly around: in my opin­ion if the Church of Eng­land won’t let go of its anti­quated prej­u­dices then its posi­tion as far as our gen­er­a­tion is con­cerned will become pre­car­i­ous indeed.

Whose fault is it that inequal­ity in mar­riage is still rife?

The gov­ern­ment is cer­tainly at fault — it has taken steps towards equal­ity with civil part­ner­ships and now civil mar­riage nar­row­ing the gap between the rights of het­ero– and homo­sex­ual cou­ples. But politi­cians are too scared of anger­ing the major reli­gious groups to lift the ban on same sex mar­riage in church.

It’s our fault too: the wed­ding indus­try, the gen­eral pub­lic: we leave the equal rights cam­paign­ers and the politi­cians to it. This shouldn’t be a debate just for the gay com­mu­nity and the House of Com­mons — it should be a con­ver­sa­tion we all con­tribute to.

Within the wed­ding indus­try we are blink­ered. Despite see­ing almost 43,000 civil part­ner­ships in five years we really don’t talk about same sex mar­riage or civil part­ner­ships, and we don’t tend to wade into polit­i­cal debate. Con­sid­er­ing the audi­ence demo­graphic of wed­ding blogs — thou­sands of young cou­ples who are inter­act­ing with churches, reg­is­trars and wed­ding sup­pli­ers — it’s time wed­ding blog­gers at the very least joined the conversation.

While the gov­ern­ment is mak­ing steps towards change in a pos­i­tive way, and the wed­ding indus­try I’m sure will wel­come gay civil mar­riage, this whole debate is being held back by reli­gious organ­i­sa­tions. Despite being on the fringes of all of this — while we only focus on civil mar­riage and the law — their vocal lead­ers are effec­tively preach­ing homo­pho­bia. The church is try­ing to stop progress, to dis­crim­i­nate and to over­rule the rest of us in what could turn out to be a twisted pop­u­lar­ity contest.

We really need to sup­port equal mar­riage — now

The wed­ding indus­try needs to recog­nise and par­tic­i­pate in impor­tant issues. Equal­ity in mar­riage is some­thing I’m con­fi­dent we’ll sup­port as an indus­try. Our wed­ding press, wed­ding blogs and wed­ding busi­ness blogs are a plat­form we should be using to pro­mote equal­ity and change.

Begin­ning a dis­cus­sion within the wed­ding indus­try could drive sig­nif­i­cant sup­port for the Equal Love Cam­paign, which is press­ing the gov­ern­ment to end the twin bans on same-sex civil mar­riages and opposite-sex civil part­ner­ships, and to allow reli­gious organ­i­sa­tions that sup­port same-sex mar­riages to con­duct them.

This is a dis­cus­sion being held between politi­cians, equal rights cam­paign­ers and the clergy.  The impact of legal changes in 2015 will be felt by the very peo­ple we in the wed­ding indus­try can reach: mil­lions of cou­ples in their twen­ties and thir­ties. So let’s push for equal­ity now, join the debate and let our voices be heard.

What can we do to help

Most of all I’d love to see every­one involved with mar­riage and wed­dings in Eng­land and Wales sup­port­ing the move towards true equal­ity: keep­ing this con­ver­sa­tion alive is important.

Fur­ther read­ing on equal mar­riage for same sex couples

Other related infor­ma­tion sources

  Equal Love

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  • http://knotsandkisses.co.uk Nikki Ward @ KnotsandKisses

    I find incred­i­ble that like you say the law doesn’t change so any cou­ple is allowed the right by law to get mar­ried or have a civil part­ner­ship, whether in a wed­ding venue or in a reli­gious insi­ti­tu­tion.
    As you say the church are just going over the top with the whole thing and not look­ing at the facts … mak­ing it legal to do so doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily mean they will be obliged to accept it in their par­tic­u­lar churches from what I can gather … it just means the option is there for same sex cou­ples if they want it.

    • http://www.english-wedding.com Claire

      Thanks for your com­ment Nikki — and I agree with you com­pletely. The gov­ern­ment are halfway there (or will be by 2015) so one teeny lit­tle change to their plans, to at least lift the ille­gal­ity on same sex reli­gious mar­riage, wouldn’t make the blind­est bit of dif­fer­ence to all the debate going on already.
      Thanks for your com­ment — sup­port the Equal Love Cam­paign & sign the peti­tion if you can (click their logo above), and if you can share this mes­sage with your wed­ding blog read­ers and friends please do :)
      Claire xx
      Claire´s last [type] ..Is the wed­ding indus­try about to wake up to equal marriage?

  • http://www.blightybooks.co.uk Karl @ Blighty Books

    I, like Claire and Nikki, think it is crazy that same sex cou­ples can’t get legally mar­ried yet. As some one who has been pro­duc­ing wed­ding albums and been involved in the plan­ning of cer­e­monies and wed­dings of gay and straight cou­ples, I can’t believe that we are still dic­tated to by peo­ple with stuff old fash­ioned values.

  • http://www.vickerstaffphotography.co.uk Jamie

    I am behind equal mar­riage in every sense and believe every­one has the right to express that love and com­pan­ion­ship by mar­ry­ing their true love. They deserve the legal right and accep­tance which to me in this mod­ern, sci­en­tif­i­cal and free think­ing age out­weighs the reli­gious right. I pho­tographed a les­bian wed­ding a few years ago in the Man­ches­ter Town Hall and dur­ing the sign­ing of the reg­is­ter asked one of the brides whose last name would be on the license “both” she told me and I backed away in my igno­rance and we con­tin­ued to have a fan­tas­tic day.

    I get con­fused when same sex cou­ples fol­low a reli­gion that quite openly and for a bet­ter term reli­giously believes that the gay/lesbian life is against god and described as grotesque, and if you fol­low their bible, is wor­thy of the death penalty. The West­ern Chris­t­ian belief has changed in the mod­ern age to allow more fol­low­ers through the door or the death of the church was immi­nent but the belief of same sex cou­ples is against the foun­da­tion of their reli­gion. Adam and Eve are the par­ents of the world (despite the hugely and obvi­ous find­ings of evo­lu­tion), and I respect the reli­gions for keep­ing their faith to that end and main­tain­ing the ban on same sex marriage.

    I respect their level of ‘keep­ing the faith’; I don’t agree with it, and never will but we’re ask­ing them to change their reli­gious beliefs which is a huge ask. I grew up as a Jeho­vahs Wit­ness and sup­pressed to the most nar­row minded and igno­rant views so sub­se­quently left and fol­lowed the life I believe true and right. Those cou­ples should surely be seek­ing the same life and want­ing the laws and the accep­tance of those close to them and as less and less go to church the accep­tance of their fel­low county men/women. Change the law to show same sex mar­riage deserve the same rights as every­one else and to marry where they want, with regards to reli­gion, fol­low a reli­gion that accepts you for who you are in the first place.

    Pho­tograph­ing any wed­ding is always a priv­i­lege, it should be the most joy­ous occa­sion and no mat­ter what race, sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion or any­thing else it should be just that. Both Tory and I will sign the above peti­tion gladly and hope true equal­ity is received by all.

    • http://www.english-wedding.com Claire

      Jamie and Tory, firstly thank you for sup­port­ing the peti­tion — and thank you for such a thought­ful com­ment. It’s very inter­est­ing to look at this from dif­fer­ent perspectives.

      I always try and respect people’s reli­gious beliefs and their right to prac­tice reli­gion. I know it’s some­thing which peo­ple hold very dear and often live by and for.

      Your words “fol­low a reli­gion that accepts you for who you are in the first place” are spot on. And to church lead­ers who try and impose their views on wider soci­ety… I think we agree on that one.

      Thank you both xx
      Claire´s last [type] ..Is the wed­ding indus­try about to wake up to equal marriage?

  • http://lmgeorge.blogspot.com Laura George (@lmgeorge92)

    I under­stand your frus­tra­tion at the Church get­ting involved and some out­dated, homo­pho­bic bish­ops get­ting involved. But please be care­ful that you’re not tar­ring every Chris­t­ian with the same brush.
    I am a 20 year old Chris­t­ian who can bear wit­ness to hun­dreds of young Christian’s like myself, or are
    1) becom­ing a new, young gen­er­a­tion of chris­tians (not the ris­ing gen­er­a­tion age you cited!)
    and 2) sup­port gay mar­riage.
    First and fore­most, Chris­tian­ity is about rela­tion­ships not reli­gion. From that stance, I believe every­one has the right to fall in love and get mar­ried regard­less of their gen­der or sex­u­al­ity. My best friend is engaged to another women, and they’re plan­ning the wed­ding– which I will be fully part of!

    More­over, it’s not just the church that is get­ting involved in the debate, who can’t claim reli­gious rea­sons– they’re purely homo­pho­bic or afraid of change! At least many Chris­tians are revert­ing back to the Bible as a basis of their argu­ment, whilst that might not please every­one, for Chrsis­tians the Bible is a great source of spir­i­tual nourishment.

    so no, I don’t dis­agree with your main point, we should be mak­ing same sex mar­riage legal — and if peo­ple so wish same gen­der civil part­ner­ships, but please be care­ful of throw­ing all the Chris­tians under the same umbrella!

    Laura
    Laura George (@lmgeorge92)´s last [type] ..Count­ing my Blessings

    • http://www.english-wedding.com Claire

      Hello Laura,

      Thank you for your thoughts on this. As an athe­ist I’m always keen to try and under­stand oth­ers’ point of view and to hear your per­spec­tive as a young Chris­t­ian is really interesting.

      Per­haps I should have made it clearer I was refer­ring to church lead­ers above: Dr Rowan Williams and John Sen­tamu have fea­tured heav­ily in the arti­cles I researched for this post; like­wise the authors of “that” let­ter read out in Catholic churches. I appre­ci­ate priests have vary­ing views, and I expect there’s an even wider range of opin­ions within their con­gre­ga­tions. (It’s not my area of expertise)

      Laura, what are your thoughts on the church lead­ers get­ting involved in this debate about civil mar­riage? Is it their place to inter­vene when the gov­ern­ment aren’t talk­ing about reli­gious mar­riage? Do you think legal­is­ing reli­gious same sex mar­riage would divide the church or have seri­ous con­se­quences for church organisations?

      Just curi­ous! :)
      Claire x
      Claire´s last [type] ..Is the wed­ding indus­try about to wake up to equal marriage?

  • http://www.edible-glitter.com Ang­harad

    Well done for writ­ing such an in-depth and well thought out piece. It’s a huge issue that so many peo­ple seem to be sweep­ing under the door­mat. I can’t imag­ine the day when wed­ding mag­a­zines will start to rou­tinely fea­ture same sex cou­ples (which is a huge shame), so I agree, it’s up to blog­gers and oth­ers in the indus­try to pro­mote equality.

    I won’t wade into a debate on reli­gion, but suf­fice to say that the per­ceived rights of reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties should not be unjus­ti­fi­ably pri­ori­tised by the gov­ern­ment over the rights of other groups.

    • http://www.english-wedding.com Claire

      Thank you Ang­harad. I’m proud of this blog post — and glad peo­ple are read­ing. Lovely to hear from you again too :)

      You’re right about the wed­ding mag­a­zines, and there’s such a huge gap between ‘main­stream’ wed­ding pub­li­ca­tions (includ­ing online) and spe­cial­ist gay wed­ding web­sites, direc­to­ries and forums. I’d love to see much more crossover between the two.

      For starters though, it’s just good to talk :) Thanks for shar­ing your views.
      Claire x
      Claire´s last [type] ..Is the wed­ding indus­try about to wake up to equal marriage?

  • Kendra

    Con­sid­er­ing what is in item one and two of the rea­sons behind the uproar, I don’t find any rea­son for any­body to cre­ate a fuss out of it. Since reli­gious mar­riages in reli­gious premises are still not per­mis­si­ble under the law, there is absolutely no rea­son the the churches to express their dis­agree­ment; the gov­ern­ment have already made a com­pro­mise so that their anti-same sex mar­riage stand is con­sid­ered.
    Kendra´s last [type] ..learn and mas­ter gui­tar reviews

  • http://www.theweddinggenie.co.uk Julie Daw­son

    A bril­liant well thought and researched arti­cle. I totally agree with you. I am an athe­ist too but try and under­stand the need for a belief. I have worked in nurs­ing for many years before I was a wed­ding plan­ner and seen so many peo­ple of all races and creed live and die by their reli­gion. It’s been a com­fort to them and their rel­a­tives. What I think and believe about most of these peo­ple is that they are fol­low­ing their faith which believes that human rights should be upheld and live by rules to treat every­one fairly and with respect and as such why can’t gay cou­ples have the very same rights and respects that the same sex cou­ples are used to. I am work­ing on a gay wed­ding at the moment and the ladies i am work­ing for are a delight and very much in love. They have the same bond, respect and love that same sex cou­ples have. In fact I feel in some ways they already have to work harder at their rela­tion­ship because of soci­ety beliefs which will and do impact on their pro­fes­sional lives as well as their per­sonal ones. If we legalised same sex cou­ples mar­riages surely this would also go some way to the accep­tance gen­er­ally. We are a mod­ern tech­no­log­i­cal soci­ety, it seems a shame that some of the most pow­er­ful “church” lead­ers can’t or wont see the big­ger pic­ture. I love that the young lady Laura has a voice for the new gen­er­a­tion of today and under­stands that peo­ple are peo­ple despite their sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion. Fun­da­men­tally these church voices in my onion are scared big­oted small minded indi­vid­u­als. I will cer­tainly go and sup­port the peti­tion and copy this blog on my site to spread the mes­sage. Why would you fol­low and look to these peo­ple as an exam­ple to live by? If more of the Laura’s were heard the church might be forced to lis­ten to their point of view or at least be open to a more bal­anced debate.

  • http://www.underthevintageveil.com Sara (Under the Vin­tage Veil)

    I agree with you com­pletely. I think the rea­son I haven’t writ­ten about this yet is really because I don’t know if I’ll do it jus­tice. You’ve said every­thing I’d ever want to say.

    Hav­ing said that, I think it’s really impor­tant we’re all behind this — I have an idea!!! Will DM you xxx
    Sara (Under the Vin­tage Veil)´s last [type] ..Beau­ti­ful Brighton beach love – San­dra and Mathieu

  • http://www.angelinthenorth.com/ Anna / angelinthenorth

    I’ve been think­ing about this a lot too recently Claire and am equally angered by the reac­tion of some, usu­ally those call­ing them­selves “Chris­tians.” In my day job I’m involved in pol­i­tics and the con­tacts I’ve seen on this are — with­out fail — neg­a­tive (actu­ally out­raged) and loaded with reli­gious rhetoric. What hap­pened to ‘love thy neigh­bour as thy­self’? Mar­riage doesn’t have to mean only a union between man and woman, it just hap­pens that that’s how it has become to be under­stood. Words and mean­ings change ALL THE TIME. Remem­ber when the word ‘gay’ meant some­thing alto­gether dif­fer­ent?! Keep up the good work we need to talk about these things.
    Anna / angelinthenorth´s last [type] ..We’re mov­ing!

  • Rachel

    This is a really inter­est­ing post– thanks for writ­ing it. I’ve been talk­ing about the con­sul­ta­tion with a few peo­ple recently and there seemed to be a lot of con­fu­sion as to what it’s actu­ally propos­ing. It was really help­ful to read what the con­sul­ta­tion actu­ally is on.

    I think one of the most frus­trat­ing ele­ments of this whole debate is the role of the church and the state. I can’t really under­stand why reli­gious lead­ers are occu­py­ing such promi­nent posi­tions in this debate. I can sym­pa­thise with their posi­tion on mar­riage — taken from the Bible, of one man and one woman, for­ever. All the same, I don’t really see how it affects them and Jesus got pretty angry at peo­ple who were judg­men­tal and con­demn­ing. He was friends with pros­ti­tutes and women, tax col­lec­tors and lep­ers. All of these peo­ple were seen as inap­pro­pri­ate com­pan­ions for a jew­ish male and he didn’t seem to care a bit. The point that I’m try­ing to illus­trate, is that the mes­sage of the Bible is one of sal­va­tion and care for peo­ple, and that Jesus was inter­ested in those that other peo­ple were keen to reject. He never told some­one that he didn’t want to know them because of their lifestyle choices.

    Nev­er­the­less, the Bible does not per­mit gay mar­riage (to clar­ify some­thing that was said ear­lier in the com­ments, homo­sex­u­al­ity does not war­rant the death penalty accord­ing to the Bible. If you’d like me to expand on that, I can). In order to try and keep this a lit­tle briefer, I’m only going to address the issue of why mak­ing reli­gious gay mar­riage is a polit­i­cal prob­lem. I totally agree with you, Claire, in that reli­gious organ­i­sa­tions who wish to marry same sex cou­ples should have the free­dom to do so. What is slightly more dif­fi­cult (and you might dis­agree with me) is mak­ing it com­pul­sory for the Church of Eng­land to marry any same sex cou­ple who wished to marry there. Because the CofE is the state church, legally it can­not refuse a cou­ple presently. If the ‘reli­gious’ def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage were to be expanded, lead­ers of churches would have to marry cou­ples who they believed it was wrong to marry. Now, you might not see any­thing wrong with this, in which case the con­ver­sa­tion takes a slightly dif­fer­ent turn. For me it just raises some inter­est­ing ques­tions about the church and state. I don’t think that a church should be forced to per­form a reli­gious cer­e­mony (whether that is a wed­ding or a bap­tism) by the state. I think that churches of their own accord should be wel­com­ing to peo­ple from all kinds of places and back­grounds, but a gov­ern­ment man­date seems odd to me. So if I had my way, I’m not sure we’d have a ‘church of eng­land’ par­tic­u­larly as it is so woe­fully unrep­re­sen­ta­tive of Chris­tian­ity in the UK. I go to a church which is buck­ing the trend. One, it’s grow­ing and two, the aver­age age is well below 65 ;)

    I think what we are really ask­ing the church to do, is to think dif­fer­ently. The fact that the church (on the whole) doesn’t accept same sex mar­riage as an accept­able insti­tu­tion is what peo­ple find repuls­ing. The fact that same sex cou­ples can­not be mar­ried in a church is just a symp­tom of a deeper belief. Gen­er­al­is­ing, I think I’m right in assum­ing that we don’t think we can force peo­ple to change what they think. So lets look at the pos­si­bil­ity of enforc­ing a law which states that churches have to marry same sex cou­ples against their beliefs, but at the couple’s request:

    I think mar­riage is a won­der­ful thing, some­thing to be entered into joy­fully and soberly. If we were to make the cofe per­form same sex mar­riages when that church believed that mar­riage to be wrong, it would seem hor­ri­bly disin­gen­u­ous and false (again, you might dis­agree with me on this). I cer­tainly would not want to marry in a place where they believed my mar­riage was wrong, even if they legally had to say all the words which indi­cated oth­er­wise. But then, I am not a part of a same sex cou­ple who wants to marry.

    So I think a bet­ter pro­posal would be to allow churches (and other reli­gious insti­tu­tions) to marry same sex cou­ples if their the­ol­ogy per­mit­ted, and allow oth­ers to con­tinue as they have before (for exam­ple, some churches will not remarry divorced cou­ples in cer­tain cir­cum­stances). It would require a lot of re-jigging of the way things cur­rently are but I imag­ine it could work.

    This is a really long com­ment! I hope that I’ve not just writ­ten utter non­sense! I agree that the blogs are a great place to have these dis­cus­sions, and I’m happy to be a part of them!

    • http://www.english-wedding.com Claire

      Thank you all for your com­ments. I’ve read each at least twice — I’m fas­ci­nated by all the dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives on this debate and now par­tic­u­larly look­ing into Rachel’s thoughts on the subject.

      Rachel, while I don’t really under­stand the church sys­tem / hier­ar­chy I agree with the points you’ve made. While I was research­ing and writ­ing this blog post I did con­sider poten­tial impacts of the pro­pos­als — but decided to leave my blog post where I did to avoid over­com­pli­cat­ing things.

      Now I’m brought back to think­ing of the ideal out­come — at least in my mind — from all of this. Your com­ment has really got me thinking.

      I believe the only fair out­come of these pro­pos­als and at this stage will be to make it legal for reli­gious organ­i­sa­tions to marry same sex cou­ples on their premises. The deci­sion will then lie with the church organ­i­sa­tions and priests from each church. (Read­ers please note I’m includ­ing tem­ples, syn­a­gogues, mosques when I use the word ‘church’ here — that’s a func­tion of my lim­ited knowl­edge of reli­gious systems.)

      If the legal ban is taken away, and it becomes legal to marry a same sex cou­ple on reli­gious premises, then it’s going to be up to churches, priests and con­gre­ga­tions to decide.

      Some churches might be very hier­ar­chi­cal and the top priests dic­tate what they will and will not allow. Oth­ers might be more lenient and leave the deci­sion to indi­vid­ual parish priests to make.

      I’m aware there are plenty of gay priests in Eng­land and Wales. I’m aware not all Chris­tians / Mus­lims / reli­gious peo­ple are against gay mar­riage in church.

      The debate within the church would be very inter­est­ing indeed. I hope it would be peaceful.

      In an ideal world, each reli­gious organ­i­sa­tion would let priests decide whether or not to marry same sex cou­ples in their church. And I would hope that if not now, cer­tainly in twenty years’ time most churches would wel­come gay marriages.

      That’s my view any­way — thank you Rachel for get­ting me think­ing again.

      Claire x
      Claire´s last [type] ..Is the wed­ding indus­try about to wake up to equal marriage?

  • http://lmgeorge.blogspot.com Laura George (@lmgeorge92)

    Thank you for your response Claire and also your com­ment on my own blog :)
    I think, that whilst the role of the Church and Chris­tian­ity within the UK is dwin­dling, we are still con­sid­ered a Chris­t­ian Coun­try– with David Cameron say­ing not long ago that he’d like to go back to Church val­ues. With this in mind, I think Church lead­ers such as John Sen­tamu and Rowan Williams, will prob­a­bly always be con­solted on issues which are likely to divide the nation-as I said, it’s not just reli­gious peo­ple who are anti a change in the law!
    I totally agree that the views seem homo­pho­bic and out dates, how­ever, they are both incred­i­ble men who have done a lot more then sit on their asses– which is more then can be said for a lot of chris­t­ian lead­ers lower down the chain.

    So whilst I’m not sure that it is their place to get involved, I do think that it is unavoid­able.
    The changes are likely to divide the church com­mu­nity, as homo­sex­u­al­ity already does– but I think it wll be with sur­pris­ing out­comes, I have already seen so many young chris­tians in abol­sute favour of the changes, com­pared to a select few who aren’t.

    I hope I’ve explained this full enough :)
    Laura George (@lmgeorge92)´s last [type] ..Count­ing my Blessings