“All-embracing partnership Act”

“Dr Cretney recognises that friends who simply share common interests may be deterred from registering as partners by the fear that their friends would wrongly assume that they were homosexual. But he points out that no less a body than the Bishops of the Church of England has explained that civil partnership is “not predicated on the intention to engage in a sexual relationship”.

In reality, the number of heterosexuals who enter civil partnerships is likely to be small. Would it therefore be accurate to describe the new relationship as “gay marriage”?

While the legislation was going through Parliament, Lord Filkin, the minister for constitutional affairs, said it would “create a parallel but different legal relationship that mirrors as fully as possible the rights and responsibilities enjoyed by those who can marry”. Marriage would be a “template for the processes, rights and responsibilities that go with civil partnership”, he added.

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