Lesbian marriage rights bid
OutRage News Service June 6th......

Lesbian couple married in Canada seek legal recognition in the UK

High Court London, Tuesday 6 June 2006

London – 6 June 2006

"This case is a historic legal challenge to the UK’s non-recognition
of same-sex marriage. If they win in the High Court, it will pave the
way for further legal actions to strike down the ban on lesbian and
gay couples getting married in Britain," said Peter Tatchell of the
gay and lesbian human rights group OutRage!

Mr Tatchell was commenting on the legal action launched today in the
High Court in London by a British lesbian couple, Sue Wilkinson and
Celia Kitzinger, who were lawfully married in Canada in 2003. They
want their Canadian marriage to be given full legal recognition in the
UK.

"If the court rules that lawful same-sex marriages conducted abroad
should be recognised in the UK, it will be difficult to justify the
continued illegality of same-sex marriages conducted within the UK.

"If gay marriages enacted overseas are legitimate, why aren't gay
marriages in the UK also legitimate?" added Mr Tatchell.

Wilkinson and Kitzinger's marriage is fully recognised in Canada. But
the UK's Civil Partnership Act says that same-sex couples who marry
overseas "are to be treated as having formed a civil partnership". Sue
and Celia want the UK to recognise their marriage as a marriage, not
as a civil partnership.

"This is a major challenge to a grave injustice," said Mr Tatchell

"All other marriages conducted lawfully abroad are recognised in the
UK. To deny recognition to a lawful same-sex marriage is
discrimination.

“"n a democratic society everyone is supposed to be equal before the
law. Refusing to recognise same-sex marriages enacted in Canada is a
denial of equality, since opposite-sex Canadian marriages are granted
automatic legal recognition in Britain.

"The ban on same-sex marriage in the UK is institutional homophobia.
It signals the continuing second class legal status of lesbian, gay
and bisexual people.

"The government's position is that same-sex marriages conducted abroad
are accorded the status of civil partnerships within the UK. This is
unacceptable.

"Civil partnerships are not equality. They are sexual apartheid, with
one law for heterosexuals, marriage, and another law for gays, civil
partnerships.

"The homophobia of the ban on same-sex marriage is compounded by the
heterophobia of the ban on opposite-sex civil partnerships. Two wrongs
don't make a right.

"Civil partnerships are second best. Nothing less than marriage
equality is acceptable," said Mr Tatchell.

"A different-sex couple married in Canada would automatically have
their marriage recognised as a marriage in the UK. We believe that to
operate a different set of rules for same-sex couples is profoundly
discriminatory - an affront to social justice and human rights,” said
Sue Wilkinson.

"We are bringing a test case to the High Court in London, with the
support of the human rights watchdog, Liberty, who are providing legal
representation; and with the backing of OutRage!, the lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender human rights group," added Celia Kitzinger.

"Our lawyers are seeking a declaration of the validity of our
marriage, with reference to the European Convention of Human Rights
and the Human Rights Act 1998," concluded Ms Kitzinger.

A copy of a statement by Sue Wilkinson and Celia Kitzinger follows
below.

Further information:

Sue Wilkinson: 0789 1802 168

Celia Kitzinger: 0789 1802 155

Sue and Celia’s website is: www.equalmarriagerights.org

Liberty Press Officer, Jen Corlew 020 7378 3656
 jenC@Liberty-human-rights.org

Brett Lock: OutRage! 0770 843 5917


Background to our legal challenge

By Sue Wilkinson and Celia Kitzinger

We are a lesbian couple and we've been together for 16 years. We're
British citizens, and have lived in England for most of our lives.
Our home is currently in Yorkshire. We're both university professors:
Celia at the University of York and Sue at Loughborough University.

From 2002-2004, Sue was living and working in Vancouver, Canada, as a
visiting professor at Simon Fraser University. This appointment
coincided with the historic period when the courts (first in Ontario,
then in British Columbia) opened up marriage to same-sex couples.
Same-sex marriage is now legal at federal level across Canada. On 26
August 2003, at a civil ceremony in a flower-decked conservatory in
Yaletown, Vancouver, we made our vows: "With this ring, as a symbol of
my love and commitment, I call on those present to witness that I
Celia/Sue do take you Sue/Celia to be my lawful wedded wife, to have
and to hold, from this day forward, through all our life together".
The marriage commissioner declared: "upon the authority vested in me
by the Province of British Columbia, I now declare you wife and
wife".

The decision to marry was an affirmation of our love and our
commitment to each other. Being granted full social equality through
marriage was of profound symbolic importance to us. Especially for
Celia, who first came out as lesbian as a teenager more than thirty
years ago, when homosexuality was still treated as a psychiatric
illness, and prejudice and discrimination against lesbians and gay men
was taken for granted, this marked a huge advance in social justice:
"I never expected to have the opportunity to marry someone I loved".
Our marriage also provided a practical, one-step solution to many of
the problems of sustaining a relationship across international
boundaries (immigration, healthcare provision, wills, power of
attorney, and so on), as Celia was still living and working in
England.

In Canada, as in Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain (as well as the US
state of Massachusetts), marriage is legally available to any two
people regardless of gender and sexuality. In the UK, by contrast,
the government has recently confirmed that it has no plans to open up
marriage to same-sex couples.

For the first two years of our marriage, our relationship had no legal
recognition at all in our home country - unlike the marriage of any
heterosexual couple married overseas, which would automatically have
been recognised in Britain. Then, in December 2005, with the
implementation of the new Civil Partnership Act (CPA), our marriage
was automatically - without our consent, and against our wishes -
converted by the state into a civil partnership. The CPA says that
same-sex couples who legally marry in countries where it is possible
for them to do so "are to be treated as having formed a civil
partnership" (CPA, para. 215).

Civil partnerships are an enormously important step forward for
lesbian and gay rights. They make a huge practical difference to our
ability to protect our loved ones and mark the beginning of a new era
of acceptance for non-heterosexual family forms. But civil
partnership is a different institution from marriage - a separate
institution for same-sex couples only, while marriage is reserved for
different-sex couples only. This maintains a symbolic separation of
lesbians and gay men from 'normal' society, sending out the
inescapable message that our relationships are not worthy of
recognition through marriage. This discrimination is demeaning and
unjust. Separate is not equal.

Our case is fundamentally about equality. We simply want to be
treated the same way as any heterosexual couple who marries abroad -
to have our valid Canadian marriage recognised as a marriage in our
home country.

With the support of the national human rights organization, Liberty,
we are going to the High Court to seek a declaration of the validity
of our marriage - as a marriage, not as a civil partnership - under
Section 55 of the Family Law Act 1986. Our lawyers will argue that
any failure to recognise the validity of our marriage constitutes a
breach of our rights under the European Convention on Human Rights
(incorporated into UK domestic law by the Human Rights Act 1988).
They will argue specifically that it breaches Article 8 (right to
respect for private and family life), Article12 (right to marry), and
Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination), taken together with
Article 8 and/or 12.

The High Court judge who has considered the case said in his interim
ruling (handed down on 12 April 2006): “I consider that there is
sufficient material available for an argument based on principle ...
that the requirement of the Civil Partnership Act that a marriage
between same-sex partners abroad must, on registration, be treated as
a civil partnership and not a marriage, is on the face of it
discriminatory on the grounds of sexual orientation” (Wilkinson v.
Kitzinger, Her Majesty’s Attorney-General & The Lord Chancellor).
Winning our case could establish that the human rights to respect for
private and family life and to marry apply equally to lesbians and gay
men - not just to heterosexuals.

This is an important challenge to a legal system that has never yet
extended either the right to respect for private and family life nor
the right to marry to same-sex couples. Although our case calls for
the government’s recognition of our valid overseas marriage, it has
far-reaching implications for lesbian and gay equality and human
rights more generally across Europe.

Further information:

Sue Wilkinson:

Celia Kitzinger:

Brett Lock: OutRage!

ENDS