The government has today announced plans to bring forward legislation to allow same-sex marriage. After years of determined campaigning we strongly welcome this move towards equality and know that many thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people will be looking forward to the opportunity to make this commitment to each other.
The governments consultation response sets out in detail that religious freedom will be protected with a "quadruple lock" - individual churches and ministers will need to opt-in She also outlined that the Church of England and the Church of Wales will be specifically excluded from same-sex marriage. Most importantly the government has committed to bring legislation to allow civil marriage, and marriage in churches, synagogues and mosques for same-sex couples. This is obviously very welcome!
The key proposals are:
- To enable same-sex couples to have a civil marriage ceremony
- To enable those religious organisations that wish to conduct same-sex marriage ceremonies to do so on a permissive basis only
- To provide explicit legal protections for religious organisations that will allow them to continue to operate unhindered within their doctrines and beliefs as they do now
- To retain civil partnerships for same-sex couples only
- To enable existing civil partners to convert their partnership to a marriage if they wish
- To enable individuals to change their legal gender without having to end their marriage
The full response can be read at http://homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/about-us/consultations/equal-civil-marriage/consultation-response
We have not however secured this important progress just yet. Those who oppose equality have been deluging MPs with letters decrying that the marriage of two women to each other will lead to everything from polygamy to the end of civilisation itself. We have discussed at length why we find no basis to their arguments (link to article), however the sheer volume of mail is hard to ignore.
It is vital that we write in similar numbers to tell MPs why this legislation is important and must be supported. We are therefore asking you to send your MP a short email and tell them what the change will mean to you. Many of you will be writing to MPs that have already told us they support equal marriage; they need to hear from you that you agree with them and support them. Many of you will be writing to MPs who are against equality; we need you to write to them and tell them why they are wrong. And some of you will be writing to MPs who haven’t yet told us which way they intend to vote; it’s vital that we understand any concerns they have so we can help them overcome them.
To help you write to your MP we have setup a simple email system on our website. Once you enter your postcode you will be taken to a page that tells you which way we believe your MP intends to vote. You then have an opportunity to compose a short email to them giving your view. We’ve added some notes we hope are helpful, but your email will have the most impact in your own words.
If you need any assistance with your email, do drop us a line. When you receive a response from your MP it would be really helpful for us if we can get a copy for our records. You can forward responses to [email protected]