When it’s in order to ask someone’s sexuality
Nigel Williams, 7 February 2013
On Tuesday 5th February, the Commons voted substantially in favour of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill at its second reading. There had been some consultation. Published alongside their 2010 manifesto, the Conservative “Contract for Equalities” promised:
“We will also consider the case for changing the law to allow civil partnerships to be called and classified as marriage.”
Language is fluid and words take on the meanings people give them. The common usage and meaning can be very different from any legal sense of a word. At present, we have the situation whereby a couple can claim “Common Law Marriage” but have no special legal rights, only the rights they give each other. At the same time, a couple in a Civil Partnership have the full legal status but not the legal use of the word. The language can move faster than the law. If people want a word to change its meaning, it takes no act of parliament for it to happen. Almost from the start, Civil Partnerships have been referred to as Gay “Marriage”. Civil Partnership ceremonies have used the same vocabulary of white dresses, tailcoats, wedding lists, honeymoons and lavish expenditure. This Bill is concerned to accelerate the removal of the inverted commas.
In the weeks before the vote, opinion polls set out to ascertain whether the bill was in tune with the public. The Guardian commissioned ICM, the Mail on Sunday used Survation. In their results they offer some detail about how opinion varies with individual circumstances. Broadly, older people, men, members of social classes D and E and Conservative voters from 2010 showed more opposition. What they didn’t report was whether those questioned were either married or gay. Questions about sexuality and marital status appear intrusive and irrelevant on an application, job interview or Fire Brigade’s annual report. For an issue that is of potentially life-changing concern to gay couples and that could redefine a relationship that older couples have shared for decades, it is a crucial omission.
The Mail’s survey found that a majority expressing views (62 per cent of the weighted sample, with 14 per cent don’t know), even of supporters (47 per cent with 17 per cent don’t know), did not consider the Bill should be a priority. If they were neither gay nor married nor contemplating marriage, the issue only affected other people. It will be interesting to see whether the take-up of same-sex marriage matches the levels of Civil Partnership. After their introduction in late 2005, Civil Partnerships in England and Wales settled to about 6,500 annually by 2010, affecting approximately 80,000 to 90,000 people altogether. For comparison, there were 240,000 new marriages and approximately 25 million married people in 2010.
The surveys each questioned about a thousand people. That is enough to give a sensible margin of error around 3% either way on a binary question that divides roughly 50:50. For sub-groups, the margin of error goes up a lot, and this is where a thousand people becomes obviously too few. A random choice of a thousand adults in England and Wales would be exceptional if it drew more than 10 people in Civil Partnerships. Understanding their views, and those of gay people generally, will take larger or more specialized polls. However, there remains a very useful distinction between the views on marriage of the married and widowed against those of the single and divorced.
This is only a binary question in the sense that the polls expected Yes or No answers. The term marriage carries a lot of different meanings. The potential contrasts between opposite-sex and same-sex couples are too many to sum up in the one word “equal”. It can mean one day of dressing up and partying. Or it can mean a lifelong commitment to a shared life, offering at least the intention of stability to the partner and any children, natural or adopted. The lifelong aspect is why society recognizes marriage. The pension and inheritance rights stem from the assumption that the partnership will still be in place when one partner dies. Most other married rights are granted not by the State or the Church but by the other person. No-one has any right to marry until a partner agrees.
In mainstream Churches, marriage is also a sacrament. This is a concept important to those that believe in it and almost incomprehensible to those that do not. A Christian gay couple may need to choose between celebrating civil marriage at once or holding out for having their relationship religiously solemnized at a later date. Formally and informally, Churches uphold and bless forms of relationship besides traditional marriage.
With time and listening, people may come to understand how others want their relationships to be regarded. How else can we appreciate that someone brought up in an age when homosexual acts were deemed criminal might take longer to start using the same word as for their most precious relationship? Or how else can anyone that thought Civil Partnerships represented a workable compromise appreciate the slight felt by a gay couple at having inverted commas round their “marriage”? Finding a consensus is unlikely to be helped by name-calling or accusations of bigotry. More constructive is the common ground of lifelong commitment and stability.
If it becomes law, this Bill is not likely to be the last ever change to the definition and circumstances of marriage. The general consultation process is not over. As we try to understand what everyone else wishes marriage to become, it might help if some opinion polls checked what sort of relationships we were in at the same time as asking our views.