Religious civil partnership proposal put forward
Proposed amendment to Equality Bill would allow religious civil partnerships
Religious groups including Quakers could be allowed to carry out civil partnerships for same-sex couples, if an attempt to change the law is successful. The proposal appears in an amendment to the Equality Bill currently going through Parliament. No religious element has been allowed in civil partnership ceremonies since they were introduced in 2005. This could change if Parliament passes the amendment proposed by Waheed Alli, a gay Muslim and member of the House of Lords.
However, the amendment falls short of allowing same-sex couples to marry on the same basis as different-sex couples, a call made by Friends at Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) last year.
Nonetheless, Alli cited Quakers as an example of a group that would be involved in civil partnerships if this were allowed.
‘It must be a matter for churches and religious organisations to decide for themselves but, having decided, the law should not stand in their way’ he said.
The government has taken a very different view, and rejected the amendment. A spokesperson said that ‘the issue was debated at length during the passage of the Civil Partnership Act and the government see no need to revisit it now’.
There have been a number of calls to change the marriage laws over the last year, with BYM’s decision in July being one of the most prominent. In August, the Christian thinktank Ekklesia urged an overhaul of the law to separate religious marriage from the legal registration of relationships. In November a heterosexual couple in London attempted to register for a civil partnership to highlight what they see as the unjust distinction between ‘partnership’ for same-sex couples and ‘marriage’ for different-sex couples.
Alli’s proposal is one of many suggested amendments to the Equality Bill. Several conservative pressure groups have called for religious organisations to be exempt from some of the Bill’s provisions, for example those relating to discrimination in employment on grounds of sexuality.
In response, a number of Christian, Muslim, Jewish and secular organisations have launched the Cutting Edge coalition to campaign against exemptions for faith groups.
