Three Years Of Civil Partnerships

Here's one thing more to celebrate this festive season: the 21st of December is the third anniversary of the introduction of civil partnerships in England and Wales. It is marriage in all but name, and gives a pair of gay men or women the choice to get hitched if they so wish, just like straight couples. I do have gay friends who are against this: they don't understand why anyone would want to ape heterosexual society in any way at all, and they seem perfectly happy to live in all sorts of valid but unconventional familial structures, rejecting marriage as little more than societal artifice. But at the same time, I have many friends who dream of meeting Mr. Right and settling down to a cosy lifetime of entwined bliss. A civil partnership is to them the icing on the cake and the start of an exciting journey at the same time. Indeed, in the Pink Singers at least four members have civil partners, perhaps suggesting that we are a more romantic bunch? I am inclined to the whole marriage idea, but for me a civil partnership is also about a bringing together of two families, something which is not always easy.

Here are a few interesting figures from an Economist article on civil partnerships:

1. 60,000 Britons had entered a same-sex union in the last 6 months.
2. Gay couples getting hitched are older than straight ones: men are 43 on average and women 41, compared with 36 and 34 among straight couples (including those remarrying).
3. Gay men, though often characterised as promiscuous, are settling down in greater numbers than lesbians. Men have out-partnered women in every quarter since civil partnerships were introduced; in London last year nearly 75% of those contracted were between men. Some unions have already broken down; but so far male partnerships have proved less likely than female ones to end in dissolution.

In a world where there are people out there who want to annul the unions of those who are already married, just because they happen to be gay, I want to raise a glass to civil partnership and the triumph of equality and humanity over prejudice and bigotry.