Full Marriage Equality for the UK?

When the UK first implemented civil partnerships, it was commonly reported as gay "marriage", and widely viewed as marriage in everything but name. With the passing of time and greater familiarity, the feeling has grown that "everything but name" doesn't cut it, that separate isn't equal, and that names matter. There has been increasing public pressure to upgrade to full marriage, and increasing support for the idea from leading politicians - without any firm commitments from the ones with the clout to implement it.

Today, a prediction (not a promise) from Liberal Democrat deputy leader Simon Hughes is the clearest indication that the change will indeed come. The difficulty is the time scale. Mr Hughes has not said anything more than that it will be "before the next general election" - that is within the next five years. That's all very well, but with the gay marriage train accelerating worldwide, five years from now, gay marriage will be routine across much of the world. I certainly agree that the UK will have full marriage equality by 2015 - but I hope it can be somewhat earlier than that.

This is from the Telegraph:

'Gay couples will get equal right to marry'

The Coalition will give homosexual couples the same legal rights to marriage as heterosexuals, a senior Liberal Democrat has said.

Simon Hughes, the Lib Dem deputy leader, said that the Government will allow same-sex couples to have “civil marriage” with same legal status as marriage between a man and a woman.

His comments follow moves by a Lib Dem minister to allow homosexual couples to have religious elements to their civil partnership ceremonies.

Under current rules, same-sex couples can contract a civil partnership, which is recognised in law but not given the same status as marriage for a heterosexual couple.

Mr Hughes predicted that before the next general election, the law will be changed to give an equal right to full marriage.

“It would be appropriate in Britain in 2010 to have civil marriage for straight people and gay people equally,” he said.
“The state ought to give equality. We’re halfway there. I think we ought to be able to get there in this Parliament.”

Earlier this month, Lynne Featherstone, the equalities minister, said the Coalition was considering allowing same-sex couples to include key religious elements in civil partnership ceremonies.

The full equality that Mr Hughes advocated would go further than that, although he insisted any change would be limited to civil marriage and would not place any obligations on religious groups to marry same-sex couples.

Mr Hughes, regarded as being on the left of the Lib Dems, has been critical of some Coalition policies and has threatened to reject parts of the Government’s Budget package.

But, in comments in an internet-based interview, he backed the Coalition and said it was increasingly following a Lib Dem agenda.

“All the time, we are making Tories, at least Tories in government, more enlightened and that must be good for the country,” he said.

During the election campaign, the Conservatives were the only main party to suggest that they would consider allowing full homosexual marriage. Some lawyers say that would be easier to legislate for than altering existing laws on civil partnership and civil marriage.

A Queer Presence at the UN

In a most welcome development, an LGBT human rights group has just won accreditation for observer status at the UN - over strenuous opposition from some GOP politicians.  Among other benefits, this has huge symbolic value - and will enable LGBT lobbyists to directly counter Vatican lobbying efforts lesbigaytrans issues.

From Huffpost:

US gay rights group gets UN accreditation

UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. Economic and Social Council has voted to accredit the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission after strong lobbying by the U.S. administration.

The 54-member council approved the U.S.-based group's application for consultative status by a vote of 23-13 with 13 abstentions.

The organization, which has offices in South Africa, Argentina and the Philippines, has been trying since 2007 to get consultative status with the council so it can work at the United Nations. The council serves as the main U.N. forum for discussing international economic and social issues.

The U.S. government and 14 members of Congress supporting the application believe the group's application was not approved because it promotes gay rights.

Gay Marriage: Where Next?

In the first six months of the year, three countries have already approved legal recognition for same sex marriage, up from just two last year, and an average of less than one a year during the previous eight years. The pace is clearly accelerating. We could well ask, where next? There are several candidates, some of which could see change quite soon.

The state of Marriage, Europe July 2010

Luxembourg is closely associated with its neighbours Netherlands and Belgium (hence the term "Benelux" countries), which were the first to introduce full marriage equality. At present, the Grand Duchy's legal provision is based on the French PACS, but the government has announced plans to upgrade that to full marriage. In January, the minister of Justice announced  promised that legislation would be passed before the summer recess this year. The  bill was accepted for the session which began last week, and could be passed within weeks.

Slovenia announced its intention to provide legal recognition in July 2009, and passed the first reading of the required bill in March this year. There have been no reports since.

Nepal will introduce full marriage rights for all couples, but this too could take some time yet. To comply with a ruling by the Supreme Court last year, the country is obliged to do so, and has promised to include such a provision in the new constitution currently being drafted. It is expected that this should be promulgated by May 2011.

In Finland, there has been a rapid change of opinion among parliamentarians, who seem to have shifted within months from a narrow majority against, to overwhelming support in principle.  The leading political groupings have both accepted the principle of equality, and earlier this month, the Minister of Justice announced the start of work on preparing legislation. However, this will be a slow progress: the bill is likely to be introduced only in 2012.

In terms of a court ruling last year, Germany is obliged to upgrade its current civil unions provision to "full equality" with married couples. The Government has announced its intention to do so, but it is not clear when it will do so, or how, whether by formal marriage, or by upgrading the benefits of civil unions to "everything except the name". Meanwhile, Berlin has announced its own plans to approve full marriage, which it says is the only way to provide fully with the constitutional requirement.

In Cyprus the Interior Ministry said that the government would "soon" examine the issue of extending marriage, but there has been nothing since.

Albania last July promised laws to outlaw sexual discrimination and introduce marriage equality. The discrimination law has been passed, but the marriage bill has been bogged down in a constitutional dispute: the opposition Socialists and allies party has been boycotting parliament in protest at alleged electoral fraud. Without their presence, the government cannot muster sufficient votes to pass the required change to the Family Code. When (and if) the boycott ends, expect easy passage - but don't hold your breath.

So over the next two years or so, there could be anywhere from four to seven countries approving full equality - and that's just the ones we known of.  There will likely be others coming up unexpectedly. Court rulings, or changes in government, can change things very quickly (Argentina wasn't on the radar even one year ago).

That's full marriage. What of civil unions?

The State of Marriage, South America: July 2010 (Wikipedia)

Ireland's Civil Partnership bill, granting virtually all the benefits of marriage without the name, has now been approved by both houses  parliament, and is with the President for signature.

Venezuela has civil unions legislation currently before the National Assembly. It has the support of President Hugo Chavez, and has already passed the first reading. (Civil Unions are already recognized in the state of Mérida)

In March 2010, Liechtenstein presented to parliament a civil unions bill modelled on that of Switzerland. I have seen no reports of progress since then.

In Chile, the government is currently "drawing up proposals" to extend some of the marriage benefits to same sex couples. It is not yet clear how far these will go, or how soon implementation will come.

The Costa Rican national assembly is "currently" considering legislation submitted by a gay rights group to recognise civil unions.  In April this year, the President, Oscar Arias, announced his support for the measure.

The Global Growth of Marriage Equality

I wish I had thought of doing it this way! I have often reported on the global growth in gay marriage, and looked for ways to present it in a simple graphic. Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight has found the simple key - convert the jurisdictions, whether countries, provinces or cities, to the populations living under them, and treat all of Europe as a single entity.

This is the colourful chart that resulted:

 

That's 250 million people who now live in locations where legal recognition for gay marriage has been agreed. (More are on the way. Finland this week was just the latest to declare an intention to change the law.) Please note the rather prominent band of yellow - South Africa. I have only two quibbles with this. Nate refers to the "slow" growth to equality. But going from roughly one million at the start of 2007 to two and a half million now, I would describe as rapid. I would also stress that this applies to full marriage only: it would be interesting to see a similar chart which included civil unions.

Argentina Approves Family Equality.

It's been a long night waiting for confirmation, but Argentina has just become the latest country, and the fourth strongly Catholic country, to approve family equality, even in the face of vigorous, highly visible,  opposition by the Catholic  Church. (Note that I do not describe this as "gay marriage". The legislation which has been approved includes much more than just provision for same -sex marriage.)

What is particularly pleasing to me was that while the political argument in favour was based on human rights grounds, many of the supportive politicians made clear that their support was because of their Catholic faith, which emphasized the importance of respect for those human rights.

In their marathon debate, a number of senators in the 72-member upper house referred to their Catholic beliefs in presenting their reasons for opposing or supporting the bill.

-Momento24

Even some priests declared publicly in favour of the law. It is surely significant here that Argentina is in South America, birthplace of liberation theology - and hence a strong influence in gay liberation theology, about which I will be writing for publication tomorrow. (The theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid, who took her thinking beyond gay liberation theology to queer theology and to "indecent" theology, was from Argentina. Her writing is deeply influenced by her Argentinian background, and its history of struggle against colonialism, patriarchal oppression, and injustice of all kinds.
Elsewhere in Latin America, gay marriage is recognised in Mexico City, and civil unions in Colombia and Uruguay. Argentina now becomes the first in the region to approve full equality on a national level.  It will not be the last.

(For the record: the number of countries with full marriage equality has doubled in the past eighteen months. Last January, there were just five countries with legal recognition for same sex marriage. Since then, that  with Norway and  Sweden  joined them last year, and three already - Portugal Iceland and now Argentina -in the past six months. Asia is now the only continent wit no recognition, but Nepal has promised it.)

From Reuters:

Argentina Senate Passes Gay Marriage Bill 

Argentina's Senate passed a gay marriage bill early on Thursday, clearing the way for the country to become the first in South America to allow same-sex couples to marry.

Following more than 14 hours of charged debate, during which thousands of Argentines protested outside the Congress, the upper house voted 33-27 for the proposal, with three abstentions.

"I believe this has advanced equal rights," Senator Eugenio Artaza told reporters after the debate in which many lawmakers in the upper house invoked their Roman Catholic beliefs to explain their stance.

Opinion polls show a majority of Argentines support gay marriage, but there is less backing for same-sex couples to adopt children.

The Argentine president's backing for the bill, which also gives homosexual couples the right to adopt children, has pitted Fernandez against the influential Roman Catholic Church a year before a presidential election.

Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires, had raised particular concern about the adoption clause of the bill, saying it was important to ensure that children had as role models "both a father and a mother."

The Wildlife Rainbow

Last November, I carried a link to a post at Jesus in Love blog, featuring this delightful, fun take on a gay Noah's Ark. (If you didn't do so at the time, go across now to read some useful commentary on the artist, Paul Richmond, and on  the wonderful detail incorporated into the image.)

Today, I want to explore some of the more serious message behind the image.  Although "wildlife diversity" has become something of a buzzword in any modern discussion of environmental conservation, and we routinely accept that species diversity is one useful measure of the health of an ecosystem, and its protection a valid goal for its management, we usually fail to recognise that sexual and gender diversity is as much a feature of the animal world as it is of human societies. In recent years, lesbian and gay historians have begun to uncover much of our hidden history, and to show how often simple binary and heteronormative assumptions in looking at the past, or at non-Western societies, have ensured that observers saw only what they expected to see. Now biologists are showing how those same assumptions have led to some flawed beliefs about animal sexuality. These  assumptions about sexual behaviour have led to the abundant contrary evidence from the natural world being either simply ignored, or explained away as "exceptions", exactly as the widespread evidence for human homoerotic attraction has been ignored by historians or explained away as "deviance", and so not "natural".

Natural Coupling

Of three important books on the topic, Bruce Bagemihl’s “Biological Exuberance”, named in 1999 as one of the New York Public Library’s “Books to Remember”, was the earliest, and has attracted widespread critical attention and commentary. Same sex behaviour has been documented right across the animal kingdom, but in this book, Bagemihl concentrated on mammals and birds, providing extensive evidence of an extraordinary range of sexual behaviours, and specific profiles of 190 species. He shows how animals demonstrate all the forms of physical and emotional homosexual pairing known to man are also found among animals: masturbation, fellatio, mutual rubbing, and mounting on the physical side; male-male and female- female; casual affairs, long-term relationships, and “gay” parenting are all described, as well as non-procreative heterosexual intercourse.  The widespread assumption that “natural” sexual activity is way off-beam.

One feature of human societies for which he does not find any evidence, is that of homophobia- violence or aggression against same sex couples or coupling.  We are all familiar from endless wildlife documentaries with the ferocity of male competition and violence over mating ambitions, but there has not been any documented evidence of similar aggression around or by same sex couples. I am also particularly struck by the emotional dimensions of some of these relationships.  In some cases, male pairs will form enduring long-term pair bonds, while engaging in heterosexual activity “on the side” for procreation. In some species, such as elephants and greylag geese, male pairs are said to endure even longer than heterosexual ones.

Two later books have further developed this theme. Volker Sommer's “Homosexual Behaviour in Animals: An Evolutionary Perspective” examines more closely such behaviour among a range of species which engage in homosexual activity not just occasionally but “routinely”, which include birds, dolphin, deer, bison and cats, as well as several species of primates.

For me, the most exciting of the set is “Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People", by Joan Roughgarden, published just last year, because she expands the scope of the two earlier books by incorporating studies of  fish, reptiles and amphibians as well as birds and animals, and also brings the discussion back to humans. Professionally, the author is an acclaimed academic in evolutionary biology, but is also a male to female transsexual, who successfully combines scientific expertise with personal insight to re-examine the evidence in the light of feminist, gay and transgender criticism.

These are some extracts from a useful review by George Williamson, PhD, at Mental health.net:

Though her critique is wide-ranging, Roughgarden's targets are easily named.   At broadest, she indicts a number of academic disciplines ranging from biology and evolutionary science to anthropology and theology, for the suppression of diversity.  An example of this suppression is the long-standing difficulty in getting information on animal homosexuality into the academic record.  As she documents, such information has been ignored or 'explained away' to the present day.  Of course, the charge of discrimination has often been leveled at Western culture's concept of sex and gender, and neither this concept nor its critique are any longer unfamiliar.  But Roughgarden's case is refreshing in its particularity and detail.  Conventional assumptions regarding the fixity and generality of gendered behaviors and roles, of their binate structure, of mating strategies, and even of body plan of the sexes very quickly begin to appear naive when faced with examples of fish that change gender and sex in the course of a life, all-female lizard species that clone themselves yet still have (lesbian?) sex, bird couples with 'open' relationships, primate species whose members are completely bisexual, and fish whose reproductive strategy involves the collaboration of three distinct genders.  But such data are routinely discounted through the assumed normality of a male/female genderbinary.  Much as the cultural projection of normative gender roles tends to push divergent sexual expression to the margins of the everyday social world, so has it tended to promote the exclusion of conflicting data in biology, or the pathologizing of expression in medicine and psychology.  And this must have consequences, for such omissions invalidate the theorization of sexuality and gender, for example, in evolutionary theory.  How could one accurately account for the evolution of sexuality, having left aside the data on same-sex relations or tri-gendered families?

Roughgarden recommends eliminating sexual selection from evolutionary theory, and instead proposes her own view, social selection. Courtship, she argues, is not about discerning a male's genetic quality but rather about determining his likelihood of investing in parental care for offspring.  Sex is not merely about spermtransfer, but rather about forming bonds within animal societies and negotiating for access to resources necessary to reproduce.  Further, the evidence adduced suggests this negotiation goes on in within-sex relationships as much as in between-sex relationships, such as in a group of females who share parenting among themselves.  So the picture of sex that emerges is that mating is about building social relationships first, and only secondarily about passing on genes.  This explains why much more sex than reproduction happens, including much non-reproductive sex, and also allows a clear account of homosexual sex.  The real beauty is that it does not require an explanation for homosexuality different from that for heterosexuality: both are about forming social relationships and negotiating access to resources.  Differences in the prevalence of homosexuality in different animal societies can be attributed to differences in the relationships (between-sex, within-sex) which organize and distribute resources within those societies.  Indeed, the prominent secondary sex characteristics, which at face value appear to be the basis of mate choice (the peacock's tail, the predator's size), may not be intended for the opposite sex at all.

A couple more of Roughgarden's targets are worth mentioning. Psychology and medicine have had considerable influence in forming our ideas of normality in behavior and body morphology, and thus in legitimating differential treatment of those who deviate from the norm. Homosexuality, for instance, until recently was listed as a mental disorder in psychiatry; transexuality still is. There still remain groups offering to treat and cure homosexuality. Children born with atypical genitals (penis too small, clitoris too large, some of both sexes) are often subjected to reconstructive surgery to correct their 'ambiguity'. Evidently, diversity is 'not good' in the eyes of the medical and psychological establishment. Having documented some of the disastrous consequences of these procedures, Roughgarden raises the reasonable question, "who really needs a cure?" She challenges some of the dubious bases provided for labeling these traits as diseases or genetic defects, and concludes that our tendency to pathologize difference is really what needs to be cured.

"Homosexuality"  is not in any way unnatural. Homophobia, and exclusive heterosexuality, are.

See also:

National Geographic: Homosexual Activity Among Animals Stirs Debate Youtube: Gay Animals

Homosexual Behaviour in the Animal Kingdom

The Natural "Crime Against Nature"

Argentina, Gay Marriage: Priest Barred From Celebrating Mass

In Argentina, the Senate is debating a law to approve full equality for all families. A priest who has openly declared support for the law has now been barred by the bishops from celebrating Mass.

I suppose this is not a surprise. The Catholic bishops have been fierce in their opposition to marriage equality in Argentina, encouraging major protests yesterday to protest the proposal, while Fr José Nicolás Alessio hit the news earlier as spokesman for a group of priests declaring public support for it. What is noteable in the latest twist, is Fr Alessio's stated reasoning, and his determination to meet his commitments to the community by defying the bishops, and saying Mass regardless.

I was always taught in Catholic schools that there could be no obligation to obey unjust laws or commands. Catholic teaching is clear that where a decision is determined in good conscience, it must take precedence over external authority. Fr Alessio's position is a sound, very Catholic one - but I don't suppose the bishops will see it quite like that.

Meanwhile, if I have correctly interpreted the somewhat garbled English in a separate report from Momento24, it would appear that the Senate have rejected a compromise proposal for civil unions. This means that the only proposal which will now be debated (probably tomorrow) will be the proposal for full family equality. In that basis, I guess it looks likely to pass.

From Momento24:

Priest José Nicolás Alessio was sanctioned by the Archbishop of Cordoba due to his position in favor of gay marriage.

The sanctions consist of the prohibition on offering Mass and weddings. “I am surprised and very hurt because I never thought that the Bishop of Cordoba (Carlos Náñez), who appeared more open to the position of the Argentine bishop in these prohibitions, cut off heads who think differently,” Alessio said. “I have commitments to my community. I believe more in the Gospel that in these canonical codes, so this weekend I will celebrate Mass, unless they put me prisoner, “the priest added. Alessio works in the parish of San Cayetano and is willing to challenge the sanction even if “he can make another ‘crime’ when it celebrates Mass, because the first was by thinking differently and the second will be for being faithful to my community.”