This week (Tuesday) it was announced at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham that civil partnerships would be made legal for heterosexual couples. This followed a ruling by the Supreme Court in June that allowing civil partnerships only to same-sex couples was a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The case was brought to the Supreme Court by couple Charles Keidan and Rebecca Steinfeld from London, who, as a heterosexual couple, wanted to be able to enter into a civil partnership.
The ruling, and the original application in court, have always struck me as somewhat absurd.
Civil partnerships were introduced in the UK in 2004 as a way of recognizing and giving proper legal protection to committed relationships between same-sex couples.
When the UK changed its legal definition of marriage with the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act of 2013, civil partnerships were not extended to heterosexual couples. Why would they be? The concept of a civil partnership only came into being as a way of bridging the legal gap between marriage — which was then only for heterosexual couples — and committed relationships between same-sex couples.
Since the legal redefinition of marriage, there is no longer any reason for civil partnerships to exist. Charles Keidan and Rebecca Steinfeld’s rights have really not been breached by their being entitled to access to marriage but denied access to a legal equivalent of marriage.
Instead of extending civil partnerships to heterosexual couples, surely the logical conclusion of the Supreme Court’s ruling is that civil partnerships are (in the phrase so beloved of politicians) no longer ‘fit for purpose’ and should be abolished.
Purely as a result of the way marriage laws have developed in the UK since 2000, we have ended up in the situation whereby we have this relic, the civil partnership, that for heterosexual couples is simply marriage without the commitment. In the name of ‘rights’ we have introduced a ridiculous, two-tier edition of marriage.
Of course, there are logistical difficulties with abolishing the civil partnership. Many same-sex couples are already in a civil partnership.
However, these logical difficulties are not insurmountable. There are various ways it could be implemented. I would suggest that existing civil partnerships be phased out over a number of years, with couples already in them given the option whether their new legal status should be married (under the 2013 definition) or unmarried. Of course, it would only be fair for the legal part of the conversion from a civil partnership to a marriage to be offered as a free service.
Be this as it may, surely in view of the absurdity that was introduced by June’s Supreme Court ruling, it is now time that civil partnerships were canned?
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