[calyman]

Originally Posted by boomoo

All this came about because of Ife harping on for four weeks about Dave's attitude to gay 'marriage'. She knew that it would turn the public against him.

Dave should have said there is no such thing as 'gay marriage'.

There is a civil partnership now allowed under the law for same sex people. It is not a marriage and the law does not say it is.
The law was changed to allow two people of the same sex partnership to have the rights of a male and female marriage ie passing on the home to the partner etc
Before this change they had no rights even when they had lived together for 20+ years

I'm so fed up with pedants always trying to distinguish Marriage from Civil Partnership. As far as the Government is concerned, they are exactly the same. It is only the religious homophobes pressurising Government that succeeded in having the Gay marriage, termed "civil partnership".

The clue is in the word "marriage", below is an average defintion of what the word means.

"Marriage is a social union or legal contract between individuals that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found. Such a union may also be called matrimony, while the ceremony that marks its beginning is usually called a wedding."

You will note that this also applies to "civil partnership", ergo, unless you are a homophobe, both terms mean exactly the same thing.