Updated to correct first sentence
The UK Supreme Court has ruled that restricting civil partnerships to same-sex couples is discriminatory.
The court’s own press release is here, and the full text of the judgement is over here.
UK Human Rights Blog published this beforehand: The ‘straight civil partnership’ challenge: All you need to know before the Supreme Court Judgment.
As yet it’s quite unknown how the UK government will respond to this decision. It had earlier embarked on a consultation, to which the Church of England has already responded. See our earlier article: Church of England opposes end to civil partnerships.
Some earlier articles on what the Church of England thought at the time:
Simon, you say that “as yet it’s quite unknown how the UK government will respond to [the Supreme Court] decision”. However, Tim Loughton MP, who has a private member’s bill currently before Parliament seeking to change the law to extend civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples, raised the issue yesterday at PMQs in the light of the SC decision, given a couple of hours or so earlier: “This morning the Supreme Court ruled that the Government had created inequality in not extending civil partnerships to everyone when they passed the equal marriage legislation back in 2013, and that discrimination needs to… Read more »
Thanks for clarifying what happened at PMQs. Isn’t the main argument against extending CPs to all couples related to the increase in pension liabilities that it would cause?
https://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2018/06/28/equality-wont-wait-supreme-court-rules-in-equal-civil-partnership/
Why? The set of people who will take a civil partnership (which was explicitly designed to mirror marriage in every possible way other than the name) rather than just getting married is vanishingly small. It consists of people who are fighting a completely fictive battle of concern to almost no-one about a view of registry office marriage shared by a tiny number of obsessives. Contrary to the claims made at the time, civil partnerships are now being used by only a tiny handful of same-sex couples. There might be a possible pension issue were the government to be crazy enough… Read more »
How is that £3.3B figure arrived at?
Bernard: The figure quoted by Martin Downs in the article I linked earlier also appears in this parliamentary briefing
http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN03035/SN03035.pdf
I have no knowledge of its accuracy, or of where this calculation first appeared but it seems to be quoted in a number of places.
Interested Observer argues above that there is no reason for opposite-sex CPs to include pension equalisation, but not to do so would not be removing the discrimination against opposite-sex couples about which the Supreme Court has just ruled.
No, that’s not my argument. My argument is that extending to opposite-sex couples the current civil partnership, which does include pension equalisation, will not cause any significant number of extra “civil partnerships or marriage” to be formed. In other words, opposite-sex civil partnerships will be instead of, rather than as well as, marriages. So opening up the current civil partnership to opposite-sex couples will be a non-event for pensions, as the aggregate number of people with survivor rights will remain roughly constant. It might be possible, albeit pointless and messy, to construct a marriage-lite form of civil partnership which would… Read more »
As far as I can see, the figure is to do with equalising survivor benefits between same-sex and opposite-sex partnerships (whether marriages or CPs) accrued before 2005. The figure has nothing to do with the possible introduction of CPs for opposite sex couples or the discontinuation of CPs for everybody. The report conflates a number of different issues so it’s quite difficult to tell. I agree with IO that this is a non-event as far as pensions are concerned.
This will be helpful to the Government because it will restrict the range of options it needs to consider. The only possibilities are presumably 1. To open CPs to all couples, and hence to run CP and marriage in parallel indefinitely 2. To discontinue CPs, at least for new entrants. Within option 1, if the view is that CPs are not “marriage-lite” but are a different construct of equal value, then perhaps there needs to be a provision for conversion in both directions! My post on the previous thread on this topic points to evidence, from Quebec, that CPs are… Read more »
There is absolutely no way that a government mired in Brexit is going to mess around with a complex range of marriage-lite options. So your options 1 and 2 are the only options, and neither matters. Option 1 doesn’t matter for the reasons I set out above, that no-one outside a small number of noisy campaigners cares. So a tiny number of people might enter into marriage by another name rather than marriage by name? So what? Option 2 doesn’t matter much more because last year fewer than 1000 same-sex couples had civil partnerships, and it’s unknowable how many of… Read more »
Unless they’re gonna create some kinda marriage-lite civil union, given that the purpose they were created for (equal marriage in all but name) is now redundant, the British government should just abolish civil partnerships, offering everyone a free upgrade or, if they wish, dissolution.
Of course, for the obvious reasons, the CoE would loathe this, and will do all they can to maintain the status quo. They’ll grudgingly accept civil partnerships being opened to couples regardless of sex, so that’s probably how this’ll go.
“They’ll grudgingly accept civil partnerships being opened to couples regardless of sex, so that’s probably how this’ll go.” Given how dishonestly the CofE has behaved over both CP and SSM (claiming during the SSM debates to have been supportive of CP on the basis that it wasn’t marriage, when in fact the bishops in the Lords voted for various wrecking amendments) I doubt that the CofE will get a say. Welby was completely ignored during the SSM debate other than over the matter of the CofE’s exemption and “triple lock”, a “victory” I suspect he, or his successors, will come… Read more »
From the Twitter feed of a (straight, non-Christian) acquaintance of mine:
‘I would definitely have had a Civil Partnership over a marriage if it had been possible. The history of marriage is appalling – it’s history is an exchange of women as property. I didn’t want any of that but I wanted a legal recognition of my partnership with ______’.
So apparently the market for civil partnerships is not quite dead, James.
Emphasis on “history.” Given that coverture was abolished in the 19th century, I see no reason that it continues to so taint marriage as to justify a parallel institution identical in all but name. Origin fallacy, much? And given the nakedly unequal motivation for creating that parallel institution in the first place, this fails even on its own terms.
I didn’t say I agreed with it (I don’t live in England, so I probably shouldn’t even be chiming in). But apparently to some people it’s still an important option.
Abolish Civil partnerships..there is civil marriage for any one.
There is a percentage of people, probably small, who view “marriage” as a religious construct. In their minds, civil marriage is merely the government ratifying a mutually agreed upon contractual arrangement. No different than, say, two small businesses merging together and signing off on the contract to do so. Those people might very well want to continue to have the option of a civil partnership. Whether such a percentage of the population is enough for the Parliament to continue Civil Partnerships is a matter of debate. Within gay and lesbian couples, it would be interesting to know how many have… Read more »
Can I refer Tim and Peter to my previous post (number 23 at https://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/7900-2/#comments) In Quebec, where couples have had the choice for some years, the proportion of opposite sex couples opting for CPs is about 1% (stable over time). Of same sex couples it’s 4% (reducing over time). That’s the numerical evidence. Tim, being Canadian, can confirm or deny my speculation that, because the predominant denomination is Roman Catholic, the pressure to have a CP rather than a marriage is, for both sorts of couples, if anything slightly higher in Quebec than in England. By the way, it’s somewhat… Read more »
I wouldn’t dare make pronouncements about Quebec, which is over a thousand miles from me, a different province and a very distinct society. However, I myself would be very cautious against ascribing any significance to Quebec’s historic Roman Catholicism, which has been in retreat since the days of the Quiet Revolution in the 1960s. Alan Perry would be far more qualified than me to speak about this, if he is reading this.