It is now less than a month to go until I will be in a covenant of commitment* with my partner Andrew. We cannot say that we are married, for in the United Kingdom, there is still no equal marriage for lesbians and gay men.

Yes we have Civil Partnership, but we cannot have a marriage. But is this really enough. I don’t think so.

Unlike Richard Waghorne, I don’t think that having gay marriage would be a threat to society. When Andy and I were last in Belfast City Hall handing in the music and the final details for our civil partnership ceremony we looked at the notifications of intended marriages and civil partnerships. From memory it was 14 sheets of A4 paper for the straights and 1 sheet for the gays – such a threat to Northern Ireland’s society!

We are lucky that we are able to have our a day celebrating our covenant together with friends and family in church on the Saturday. This is only tinged by the fact that were I forming a life partnership with someone called Andrea, we could get the legal and religious ceremonies all done in the day in the one venue by the one celebrant.

Some people ask why we need gay marriage – for the answer to that, I’d suggest that the response of  Conor Prendergast to Richard’s article is the best answer that I have seen for a long time.

There are some people who want to get married, be they a man and a woman, two men, two women. There are some people who want a civil partnership (possibly because of religious overtones in the use of the word ‘marriage’, who may be a man and a woman, two men, or two women.  There are some people who don’t want to form a life partnership, for whatever reason.

As far as I am concerned the State is discriminating against me when it tells me that I cannot be married to the man I love (simply because we are two men) but we can have a ‘civil partnership’ insteead. What right has the State to tell any of us who we can and cannot marry. Surely, it is between us and God (for those who believe)? For anyone else there are civil ceremonies.

And to the religious right who oppose same-sex partnerships… I’m not quite sure why some Catholics and other fundamentalist Christians get so incensed about the State providing civil partnerships – were you as opposed to the introduction of civil marriages?

If it doesn’t affect their rights to manage their own affairs, I say butt out.

It is time that we all support the Lib Dems policy on Equal Marriage throughout the UK.

Footnote:

*covenant of commitment – our term for our partnership as blessed by God