• Marriage isn’t enough

    I’ve been asked recently by a lot of people whether I’m pleased that the new legislation has gone through allowing same-sex couples to get married. I am pleased, of course. I helped to work for it and I’m delighted to see happy smiling faces of couples I know who are now as hitched as anyone else.

    However, to ask whether I am satisfied would get a different answer.

    You see, I face direct and threatening discrimination at work if I marry. Couples who want to marry in churches like mine can’t do so. And in any case, it isn’t just about marriage anyway.

    You see, marriage isn’t enough.

    We want to be able to hold hands too.

    Can you imagine being allowed to be able to go to the registrar to arrange your own marriage but be frightened to hold hands walking through George Square on your way to do so? Some people reading this will say yes to that question – most won’t even have thought of it.

    Panti Bliss, the Irish drag queen is currently continuing the great tradition of drag queens telling the truth about discrimination.

    Here she is, and if you’ve never worried about holding someone’s hand, do take a look.

27 responses to “Can you backdate a marriage?”

  1. Colin Backhouse Avatar
    Colin Backhouse

    If a man and woman from England were married in a Church in the unrecognised Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus with a proper ordained anglican minister can that marriage be registered and recognised retrospectively back in england?

    1. Kelvin Avatar

      I doubt it, but I’m not a lawyer so I don’t know.

  2. Stephen Clark Avatar

    Am interested to note that the Register in your post seems to be of the Commonwealth of Australia…we are now happily within the marriage equality fold (after a tortuous process).
    At lunch recently with a fellow priest we both agreed that while the laws of Australia may have changed, neither of us (he 70+ and I, 65) will live to see The Anglican Church of Australia allowing marriage equality; being as we are totally bullied by the GAFCON politics of the 4 or 5 Evangelical Dioceses led by the Diocese of Sydney (I would suggest that they are happy to call everyone to scriptural fidelity…whilst the first to breach the call to NOT call sisters and brothers to the secular courts…and then to bring the blessed Owen Dowling to the secular courts…because he chose to ordain women!.

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