What the others said. If you want the advantages of marriage/partnership you also have to take on the rights and responsibilites - chief of which is that this is a serious commitment made by two people that love each other, that takes considerable effort to dissolve.
Personally I think gay couples should also have the right to have a proper marriage (although I'll accept that marrying in religious institutions presents its own set of problems). For now the civil partnership is a good stopgap measure, but it still smacks of 'you're not as good as us and we're only doing this grudgingly'.
I suppose it's possible to put forward the argument that marriage, whether in a registry office or religious institution, has a whole set of societal conventions (clothes, service, reception, honeymoon, name changes) - but that's not the government's problem and can be ignored with sufficient willpower.
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Date: 2004-03-31 04:40 am (UTC)Personally I think gay couples should also have the right to have a proper marriage (although I'll accept that marrying in religious institutions presents its own set of problems). For now the civil partnership is a good stopgap measure, but it still smacks of 'you're not as good as us and we're only doing this grudgingly'.
I suppose it's possible to put forward the argument that marriage, whether in a registry office or religious institution, has a whole set of societal conventions (clothes, service, reception, honeymoon, name changes) - but that's not the government's problem and can be ignored with sufficient willpower.