LONDON, 25 June 2004 – “The Lord’s amendment to the Civil Partnership Bill has not ‘wrecked it’ or rendered it ‘unworkable’, as Government spokespeople have claimed”, according to The Coalition for Marriage Equality, which includes nearly all gay campaigning groups, except Stonewall.

“We welcome any extension of rights and protections to others, regardless of the motives” said CFME spokesperson Brett Lock. “The law should reflect the wide variety of domestic relationships. The Civil Partnership Bill offers a unique opportunity to do so,” he added.

Richard Kirker of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, a Coalition member, agrees. “The government has fallen victim to its own unwillingness to treat lesbian and gay couples equally, and so the Bill became vulnerable to anti-gay manipulation. It is at best a poor offering. While we are sure the government will get back on course in the Commons, we are hardly inspired by [the Bill’s] content, or the government’s performance,” he says in an LGCM statement.

George Broadhead of the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association, another Coalition member, said: "The wrecking of this Bill is not a tragedy. The Bill was seeking to create a second-class status for gay relationships. If the Government can’t live with opening it up to all relationships, then it should scrap the whole thing and start again from a standpoint of equality. Gay marriage is the only equitable way to proceed and if we have to play the long game in order to achieve it, then we can wait.”

Peter Tatchell, a supporter of the Coalition added: “The Lords are right to extend Civil Partnerships to carers and other mutually supportive relationships, but they are wrong to exclude heterosexual couples. That’s discrimination. Civil Partnerships should be open to everyone in a relationship of mutual care and commitment; not just gay and unmarried heterosexual couples by but any two people who live together and care for each other.”

The Coalition was formed earlier this year to challenge the ban on same-sex marriage. It includes OutRage!, The Queer Youth Alliance, The Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association, The Lesbian & Gay Christian Movement, the Jewish Gay and Lesbian Group, The National Secular Society, The British Humanist Association, ScotsGay Magazine, and many others.

From the beginning, the Coalition has argued that the only ethically justifiable way forward is to campaign for full legal equality for all, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. This would mean that civil marriage rights would be extended to same-sex couples and that Civil Partnerships would be extended to include heterosexuals as well, including all domestic relationships of mutual support and benefit.

“The principle of equality has always driven the campaign for lesbian and gay rights and we see no reason to change that” the Coalition said in a statement at the beginning of the public debate on Civil Partnerships.

“The Coalition has been calling on the Government to produce a compelling reason why different laws are needed for same- and opposite sex couples. The Government has failed to do so.”

“It is precisely because there is no logically consistent argument to support an Apartheid-style approach to partnerships that the Government finds itself with this dilemma,” says Lock. “This is what we warned them would happen at the outset, but they weren’t listening.”

Nevertheless, the Coalition recognises that Lady O’Cathain and her supporter’s intentions in proposing the amendment came from a homophobic agenda which does not want to see same-sex relationships afforded “moral equivalence” to heterosexual ones.

“Who cares?” says Lock, “we don’t think gay campaigners should be stooping to Lady O’Cathain’s level of sorting relationships into a hierarchy of social value and validity. The law should deal with the reality of people’s lives and treat them compassionately, and above all equally, and not prescribe socially engineered models of domestic ‘perfection’.”

The Coalition calls for even more amendments to the Civil Partnership Bill which will open it up to heterosexual couples as well, while renewing its call on the Government to provide a compelling reason why gay couples should be banned from getting married.

“Let’s call O’Cathain’s bluff” argues Lock, “Let’s see what her Christian Institute supporters say about using the same logic to extend the Civil Partnerships Bill to straight couples as well. Why not? She’s laid the groundwork! Extending marriage to gay couples too will be next. Again, why not? After all, justice is justice. O’Cathain says she doesn’t want the law to be ‘unjust and discriminatory’ and neither do we!”

“More and more heterosexuals who have gay friends or family no longer see a distinction. Soon the Government will have to see sense and follow the example of other European and Commonwealth countries that have opened up marriage and civil partnership schemes to all without discrimination,” says George Broadhead.

“She may have taken the fort, but it will be her Alamo,” Lock concludes. “By succeeding in preventing Civil Partnerships from being ‘gay marriage’, she has inadvertently re-opened the debate as to why there is no gay marriage. Far from preserving marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution, she has provoked even more public discussion on whether same-sex romantic couples s be treated differently from opposite-sex ones.”

ENDS