Although I am pleasantly surprised by the conservatives in the UK, I find it difficult to get enthused about Conservative PM David Cameron's proposal to open the institution of marriage up to gays. In the UK, gays already have civil partnership. Apparently there are few advantages to be gained by changing the already existing "civil partnership" into "marriage". One gains the title, the religious ceremony, and the ability to divorce in the case of adultery. To the best of my knowledge, civil partnerships already offer the option of dissolution (akin to divorce), and therefore, I do not find those things very advantageous for gays. Perhaps there is a piece of the puzzle that I am missing due to inadequate reporting in the media.
However, I suppose it is an encouraging sign that the UK Conservatives are embracing gay rights at long last and showing their ideological brethren in the U.S. how to become relevant in the 21st century. I certainly would have to look at the Republicans a second time if they came out in favor of gay rights. Today, many Republicans go out of their way to offend gays. Not every Republican is a bigot, but bigots vote Republican, if they vote at all.
For my part, once gays win civil partnership rights, that is pretty much all that is needed, other than avoiding censorship and other efforts to marginalize gays. I am not concerned about the terminology used to describe a same-sex union. I am not interested so much in the word "marriage" or the religious ceremony as the practical, necessary, real-world benefits bestowed by civil partnership. Our lives would not be as hard nor as precarious if we had the many rights and privileges our straight friends enjoy as a matter of course. If the Anglican bishops want to have a separate arrangement in their Church for gay unions, "separate but inferior," that is of little consequence to me, and I would be inclined to not care at all, for the simple reason that I am not Anglican or Catholic.
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