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Homophobic BBC Scotland Online.

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ONLY NICE THINGS

11:40 / 05.12.05

This is not equality. If it were then there would be civil partnerships into which all partners could enter irrespective of sex or orientation.

Well, quite. Which I think is the problem here - in the UK you have a state religion, and that state religion (and associated parish functions) has historically been responsible for conducting and registering official unions. Although it is now possible to have your union recognised without the intervention of the state religion, it's _not_ possible to have your union recognised if you are a heterosexual couple without that union following the format of a wedding and being called a marriage. Therefore, the freedom gay men and lesbians do not have - to be married in a ceremony performed by the state religion, as is the right of members of the state religion in heterosexual relationships, is actually thrown into sharper relief - a state-affiliated body is engaging in discrimination on the grounds of sexuality, no matter how good its reasons or how irrelevant its blessing.

The way to sort this would be to deprivilege the status of the church wedding - to allow people to negotiate whatever religious blessing of their union they might want, but to make that independent of and irrelevant to the civil act of partnership, which contains certain provisions applied identically to partnerships of any gender combination. That might be a bit ambitious, however, but is it more or less ambitious than forcing religions to perform weddings for t3h gay?

11:45 / 05.12.05

Slightly less ambitious, I'd say.

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:46 / 05.12.05

Having said which, is the problem here that BBC Scotland is homophobic or that BBC Scotland is inaccurate? If the latter, perhaps a gentle correction is in order?

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:00 / 05.12.05

I don't think I'd be comfortable with 'correcting' the title of the thread - I called a Guardian article transphobic in a title once, and I still think it was, but someone could have argued otherwise...

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:07 / 05.12.05

No, dude, I meant a gentle correction to BBC Scotland - you know, some emails or similar.

12:08 / 05.12.05

Having said which, is the problem here that BBC Scotland is homophobic or that BBC Scotland is inaccurate? If the latter, perhaps a gentle correction is in order?

Meh. I think it's homophobic, you may disagree.

12:09 / 05.12.05

Oh, I see. Already done before I started this thread Haus.

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:11 / 05.12.05

Well then, let's unfold that beyond "meh". In what way is this act of reportage homophobic? BBC Scotland itself is not setting the limits of the civil partnership, but reporting it. So, presumably, BBC Scotland is homophobic in its reporting of a homophobic ruling by HMG as a move to establish equality, yes?

Next up, since part of the Switchboard's remit is activism, what should one do about this?

12:20 / 05.12.05

Therefore, the freedom gay men and lesbians do not have - to be married in a ceremony performed by the state religion, as is the right of members of the state religion in heterosexual relationships, is actually thrown into sharper relief - a state-affiliated body is engaging in discrimination on the grounds of sexuality, no matter how good its reasons or how irrelevant its blessing.

The "freedom" part can be and is being argued in both directions simultaneously: gay people are being denied the freedom to have a religious element within their civil union and thus call it 'marriage'; straight people are being denied the freedom not to have a religious element within their civil union, with the result that it automatically becomes 'marriage'.

Who's losing out?

12:22 / 05.12.05

Homophobic as it is reporting segregation as equality. It may be unaware, unconscious discrimination, but it is still discriminatory. Activism-wise, I have already written to BBC's feedback department Newswatch.

12:28 / 05.12.05

Ganesh, you are confusing state marriage with religious marriage. I am married, have a marriage certificate, but was only married in a registry office. Civil partnerships will not even be considered equal to my marriage, despite both being secular.

12:30 / 05.12.05

In what meaningful way will civil partnerships not be considered equal to wholly secular register office marriages? Apart from being called by different names, I mean?

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:32 / 05.12.05

The "freedom" part can be and is being argued in both directions simultaneously: gay people are being denied the freedom to have a religious element within their civil union and thus call it 'marriage'; straight people are being denied the freedom not to have a religious element within their civil union, with the result that it automatically becomes 'marriage'.

Who's losing out?

Well, both sets of people - or rather, the set within "straight people" of those who do not want what they are doing to be associated in any way with the religious practices of the UK, and the set within "gay people" who do. So, really, this legal setup is not so much homophobic as discriminatory. On the other hand, the length of time for which any state recognition of partnership has been denied gay men and lesbians might count at least emotionally for someting when considering who gets to feel most miffed.

And, of course, people in relationships with more than one other person, of either gender, are still utterly banjaxed. Polyphobia, anyone?

12:34 / 05.12.05

By the way, I would also have like to have the state recognise my relationship without the baggage of the word marriage as I don't buy into the much maligned "heteronormative" paradigm either, and dislike being assumed to because of a state ratified piece of paper. We married for other reasons.

12:34 / 05.12.05

Just thought it's worth pointing out that the headline does fairly accurately describe the story it covers. It's a piece that uses a couple whose first quoted line is:

"I think it's very much that our relationships are of equal value with heterosexual relationships and that the state recognises the value of a relationship.
"I think that's a very important message"

So at least one same-sex couple is embracing what they say is equality, even if they're wrong by our definitions. Headlines should not be used to express editorial opinions, only to outline what is said in the article.

NG, I think you're right, but I wouldn't take it out on the BBC site. The story does follow up with misgivings that suggest it's not full equality, even if it doesn't directly state it. Maybe they couldn't find anyone with strong enough feelings before the deadline.

12:34 / 05.12.05

Although it is now possible to have your union recognised without the intervention of the state religion, it's _not_ possible to have your union recognised if you are a heterosexual couple without that union following the format of a wedding and being called a marriage.

Yes. Haus puts it better than I did.
Why this doesn’t feel much like progress to me is that it doesn’t sweep away divisions between gay and straight couples, it firms them up by providing separate institutions for gay people and straight people which are exclusive to one another. If mixed sex couples could avail themselves of Civil Partnership then I could imagine traditional marriage dying away, and all couples who want to share various legal relationships could join the same club. As it is, we still have segregated institutions of formal coupling.
Who’s losing out? Anyone who doesn’t want the kind of formal union allowed to them according to their sexuality, as well as anyone who wants to see less exclusive clubs, not new clubs exclusively for the previously excluded.

As a het who feels uncomfortable with the trappings and associations of traditional marriage, and who resents having to present myself to a registrar in order to enjoy various legal rights that others can access by sending some forms through the post, I feel a little bit miffed at the missed opportunity. I don’t want to get married for many of the same reasons that Ganesh doesn’t want to get married; I don’t want a wedding and I don’t want to be a member of the ‘married’ club. However, I would like to be my partner’s next of kin, be able to emigrate together, enjoy the financial benefits et al. I can’t help resenting that I can’t have one without the other purely because of the sex of my partner.
I think the idea that at last equality has been established in this area is pretty wide of the mark, and, like Nobody’s Girl, balk at seeing it presented as such.

12:38 / 05.12.05

Apologies. That should've been "who's losing out most".

It seems to me that yes, there's a subset of people within each group who might conceivably feel aggrieved at what is fairly symmetrical discrimination - and, as you say, those who don't fall neatly into homo or hetero wanting-to-commit-to-one-personness are no better off. I suppose I see it as a useful step in the right direction, though - and as someone who wants the legal doodah but still inwardly cringes every time the phrase 'gay marriage' is uttered, I guess it's a step which does put me squarely within my comfort zone.

What do we reckon is gonna prove to be the larger dissatisfied subset: the pool of gay people who can't include a religious dimension, or the pool of straight people who can't not?

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:46 / 05.12.05

Personally, I hope it might be a useful step towards separating civil partnership from marriage _completely, and making marriage something you do in your faith and civil partnership what you do in law, This seems to me to have all sorts of useful qualities, not least that it will let members of certain religions have sex without having to entwine their financial and legal status at a young age, and will allow people like Smoothly to get what might suit them much better but is at present only available to same-sex couples - a legal provision that collects together a whole bunch of processes in one easy bundle. Personally, I'd then like to see modular civil unions, where people can choose which bits of partnership they want to partake of, which then enables greater flexibility for multiple partners, but that's a bit more in the realms of vague hope.

12:52 / 05.12.05

Haus, I suspect the first part of that, at least, won't be that far away now - in the UK. With the Church of England tearing itself apart over the issue, and bums haemorrhaging from pews (eww), it's likely to become more apparent that the civil and religious forms of union are progressing very differently. Assuming civil partnerships are a 'success' for same-sex couples, I can see more and more straight people pushing for them in future.

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:54 / 05.12.05

Indeed. I can see gay men and lesbians here being used much as Scotland itself used to be - as a test bed for broader legislation.

12:56 / 05.12.05

I suspect the pool of dissatisfied straights wanting secular unions is likely to grow much larger much more quickly than its gay-wanting-religious counterpart.

12:59 / 05.12.05

Does anyone know why mixed sex couple have been excluded from Civil Partnerships? When this was originally mooted a few years ago, I was under the impression that it was going to mark exactly the kind of division that Haus suggests.
If Civil Partnerships are supposed to be anything like an alternative to marriage, it seems strange that it should exclude straight couples, but include pairs of the same sex who are not couples. It's an odd test group.

13:02 / 05.12.05

I'm with Smoothly on this one, and feel a bit perplexed about how to proceed. I'm in a long term f/m relationship and have boycotted marrige as heterosexual privilege for many years. Having said that I would like our relationship to be acknowledged for financial/next of kin/soppy love type reasons. Should we just pop down the registry office? Is it now OK to marry? Or as Nobody's Girl has been saying, does the inherent inequality of Civil Unions necessitate an ongoing boycott??

Tryphena Absent

13:05 / 05.12.05

Who's losing out?

Everyone is losing out because no one has an option.

I much prefer the idea of a Civil Partnership because I want the legal rights without the speech, without the drama, without it being all about me and specifically without the fucking vows. I want to walk into a room, sign a document and walk out a few minutes later with certain rights given to my partner without any problems. Instead there's all that nonsense about belonging- thank you but I already create enough silly romance in my head without being fed it by someone I don't know. I'd probably do it tomorrow if I could get rid of the dramatic nonsense that marriages forces on people in this country.

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:10 / 05.12.05

Smoothly - the original draft stated on eligibility:

(1) Two people are not eligible to register as civil partners of each other if—
(a) they are not of the same sex,
(b) either of them is already a civil partner or lawfully married,
(c) either of them is under 16, or
(d) they are within prohibited degrees of relationship.

That is, you can get a civil partnership if you are two same-sex friends who are not in a sexual relationship, but not if you are siblings also not in an etc. I don't think in its current form it was ever intended for those already able to marry. You may be thinking of the amendment introduced in the House of Lords to extend the right of civil partnership to blood relatives who had been cohabiting for a certain period, but that was an attempt to disrupt it spearheaded by the odious Baroness o'Cathain.

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:14 / 05.12.05

I'm in a long term f/m relationship and have boycotted marrige as heterosexual privilege for many years. Having said that I would like our relationship to be acknowledged for financial/next of kin/soppy love type reasons. Should we just pop down the registry office?

Well, that depends whether your protest was about gay couples not being allowed freedom from inheritance tax between partners and easy access to a set of legal provisions acknowledging the nature of their partnership in the eyes of the law, or whether your protest was about gay people not having the right to marry, which they satill don't.

13:55 / 05.12.05

Ganesh and Haus:

Technically, I think there's also no provision within a civil partnership for dissolving the union if it is not consummated

I think, also, that 'adultery' isn't grounds for dissolution of a civil partnership - which is a long way from recognizing the rights of polypartnered people, but means that civil partnership doesn't enshrine the same version of monogamy as heterosexual marriage.

I think I agree with everyone on this thread. Bloody marvellous that same-sex couples get legal rights, etc, but it points to the ways in which other partnering and familial arrangements are deprivileged and to the ways in which the hegemony of marriage (or rather, MARRIAGE) isn't necessarily a good thing even for monogamous long-term heterosexual couples.

14:09 / 05.12.05

Well, that depends whether your protest was about gay couples not being allowed freedom from inheritance tax between partners and easy access to a set of legal provisions acknowledging the nature of their partnership in the eyes of the law, or whether your protest was about gay people not having the right to marry, which they satill don't.

Haus - well at the time (i.e. before today in UK), marriage was the only way to have the aforementioned legal/tax etc. rights, so I was boycotting the bundle, so to speak. My question is that now some of the pie's been handed over, should I still be protesting the slice that's still out of reach? One of the reasons for not wanting to marry was the thought of lesbian and gay friends sitting in the 'audience' feeling alienated, margninalised and isolated while I had my special day. To me its not very special if several of the people who've helped you maintain your relationship are being excluded when you stand up to thank them and ask them for their continuing support (what I'm saying may seem odd to some, but for me a marrige type ceremony is partly about acknowledging that it takes more than two people to make a good relationship, and friends and family can play a big part). So, to get back to the point, I suppose I'm wondering if the Civil Union is enough to take some of the sting out of heterosexual marriage privilege? Is sitting in the audience in a big hat going to feel any less excrutiating (beyond the obvious).

14:15 / 05.12.05

Everyone is losing out because no one has an option.

Well, there's the option to remain unmarried/unregistered but cohabiting. Better in terms of state benefits, etc.

Flicking through the inevitable 'MARRAIGE SPECIAL!!1' editions of the gay glossies, I've been interested to discover that a fair proportion of 'mainstream' gay couples - the usual suspects I'd fully expected to be first in the queue for matching morning suits and pink champagne - plan to give the whole thing a miss. Colin and Justin, for fuck's sake, the screechy Scottish daytime DIY poppets, interviewed in Attitude, were clear that signing a register means nothing in terms of validating their (20+ year) relationship, and they don't see the point. Others have made similar noises. It would appear that even with regard to legal equality, there's a degree of (healthy?) scepticism.

14:21 / 05.12.05

Yes, I’ve heard a few people saying similar things (one colleague despairing of the new legislation because one of the few advantages of being gay was being taken away from him - that no one nags on at you about getting married). I can see his point.
Welcome to my world, gayers!

lord henry strikes back

14:25 / 05.12.05

Rather than derail the discussion here I have started this thread to explore the idea of weather a legal partnership is really desirable.

14:29 / 05.12.05

Christ, I've been nagged about it for years - or worse, well-meaningly patronised.

Me and Xoc have, over the last year, periodically hummed and hawed over the nuts and bolts of the whole thing. Eventually we decided that the collective desire of (mostly hetero) friends and relatives to see us spliced in some sort of twinkly ceremony (plus the greed thing - "I've spent eleventy squillion pounds on wedding gifts for others, and I want some of that back") was insufficient reason to stress ourselves out to that degree. We'll sneak off with a couple of witnesses and present it afterwards as a fait accompli. How proud our mothers will be...

14:54 / 05.12.05

We may even have to marry one another, if there are no better offers soon. I want Sandra Bullock to give me away.

I don't mean to be dismissive of many good points upthread but I am very pleased to have this measure given the force of law, imperfect as it might be. I think Elton and David showing off their diamonds from Sierra Leone all over the tabloids sends a positive signal to teenage gay boyz, on balance. It doesn't say you have to do this but it says there's that option too.

The differences I can identify between a hetero civil wedding and a homo civil partnership are so small compared to the differences in our options up until yesterday.

15:06 / 05.12.05

Yeah, I didn’t want to sound mean-spirited about it either. It’s obviously massive progress. But I think whenever there are changes like this, the remaining inequalities seem more pointed somehow. Straight people could have been eligible for Civil Partnerships. Gay people could have been given the same access to MARRIAGE as straight people. There’s also the danger that it’s presented as the job done, when it’d be better described it as a (big) step in the right direction. I think that’s the point NG was making at the beginning of this thread.

15:29 / 05.12.05

Sure - but given the state of the Anglican Communion over anything homo, it'd be naive to expect the Church to approve TEH GAY MARRAIGE - and insufficient numbers of us sufficiently bothered to lobby (or wait) for it to do so. More likely, I think, that the introduction of a religion-free, meringue-free civil alternative for one segment of the population will encourage much of the hetero population to push for the same rights. Straight people hassling for equality in law is likely to get there faster than gay people hassling for equality in faith, I'd say.

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