Same Sex Marriage now legal in England and Wales!

Today the Same-Sex Marriage Bill was given Royal Assent following final approval by the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The first weddings in England and Wales should happen next summer.

Woop woop!

From my perspective, the congratulations should be sent to the following:

• Peter Tatchell (who launched the Equal Love campaign)
• The Equality Network (leading the campaign in Scotland since 2008)
• LGBT+ Liberal Democrats (who got the party to support equal marriage as party policy)
• Lynne Featherstone (the former equalities minister who started the parliamentary process)
• Benjamin Cohen (the driving force behind Out4Marriage and Pink News)
• The Coalition for Equal Marriage (an awesome grassroots organisation)

The role of Stonewall has been interesting to watch. From initially opposing the policy to then making it a priority campaign. I'm sure that it has been heavily involved behind the scenes, usings its knowledge of parliamentary processes and contacts with MPs and Lords to get the bill through. I remain a supporter of Stonewall but can see why other people are not.

So the question remains: Will we get a free upgrade from our civil partnership or do we need to plan another celebration?

UPDATE: Forgot to say - this makes one of my Five Equal Marriage predictions for 2013 to be true!

Equality and the House of Lords

Thanks to @JaeKay i've noticed a story in the Telegraph:


Gay peers' partners may get titles too


At the moment, if a man becomes a Lord, his wife becomes a Lady but if he had a civil partner then the partner does not receive a title. If a woman becomes a Dame then her husband (or civil partner i guess) does not receive a title (like Mark Valladares, married to a Baroness).

I guess this is a legacy of women deriving their status from their husbands and not expecting men to derive status from their wives (this would have been well before same-sex couples complicated things further).


A 10-minute rule Bill (the Honours (Equality of Titles for Partners) Bill) will be introduced to give honorary titles to the husbands and civil partners of those receiving honours. Although the headline is about same-sex couples, this is really a gender equality story. If female partners of members of the House of Lords are given honorary titles, then male partners should be given them too.


The House of Lords should be replaced by a fully-elected Senate (unlike the current proposals) but whilst we still have a monarchy and peerage, it should be as equal as possible (including allowing female children to inherit titles instead of younger male siblings). Equality of honorary titles makes sense and should be supported.

Lord elected by peers does not want Lords elected by the public

According to the Daily Telegraph:
Cameron's father-in-law warns Lords reforms could lead to BNP peers

A couple of things struck me about the story...

Firstly, the Telegraph expects everyone to know that the Prime-Minister's father-in-law is actually Viscount Astor, a member of the House of Lords. I am clearly not the target demographic for the newspaper!

Viscount Astor is an elected hereridary peer - one of the 90 members of the House of Lords elected by the hereditary peers. The story could therefore be summarised as:

"Lord elected by peers does not want Lords elected by the public in case the wrong sort of people get in"

I find this a truly undemocratic argument. I profoundly disagree with the BNP (and i'm sure they don't approve of me) but they are a legal political party and if enough misguided people choose to vote for them then they should be elected and then held to account for their performance in office.

The article claims that an elected House of Lords would have a permanent block of Labour and Lib Dem peers that would limit the powers of a future Conservative government. This is the same argument that i have heard used against an English parliament (however in that case the Tories would have a permanent majority). 

Again, if the electorate votes for those parties then that is democracy, however the many people thought that the Scottish and Welsh parliaments would have permanent Labour majorities or Labour-led coalitions but reality hasn't turned out like that!

I believe in democracy and the British electorate, if someone makes laws that affect citizens like me then surely we should be able to vote to choose who those legislators are.