UK prepares for Gay Weddings

30 November -0001

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Register offices in the UK are set to join the First Gay couples in Civil Partnership in December. Hundreds, even thousands of same-sex couple are thought to be preparing for their Wedding, after a long campaign for a bill which is long overdue.

Couples will be able to notify Register offices of their aim to form a civil partnership from the 5th December, this year. Meaning that the first couples to tie the knot are will do so on the 21st December.

Civil partnerships have been designed to be as colse to marriage as possible. It provides the same rights, such as exemption from inheritance tax and next of kin rights.

They can take place at any secular licenced venue, including a registry office. Although the rules do not provide for poetic exchanges, such as vows, in practise, many register offices will allow for additions to the boring registration process, although couples will not be allowed to place the ceremony within the setting of a religious rite.

Some argue that the CPA has created a new species of discrimination rather than getting rid of an old one. Gay and lesbian couples may still not marry and now heterosexual couples are to be excluded from the status of civil partnership. Those who hold to this view will continue to argue for nothing less than the right for gay couples to marry.

A test case on this issue is to be heard in the High Court next year: Celia Kitzinger and Sue Wilkinson, a lesbian couple who legally married in Canada, will argue that the UK's failure to recognise their marriage is a breach of their human rights under Articles 8, 12 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

None of this, however, is likely to spoil the party for the many couples who will register from December.

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