The marriage debate is all over the place.
| Liberal Democrat peer Lord Lester launched a bill in the House of Lords on 10 January 2002 to propose a 'civil partnership register' to give cohabiting couples - including same-sex couples - many of the property rights that married people have (1). A government White Paper on the overhaul of the civil registration system reportedly proposes that unmarried homosexual and heterosexual men and women be allowed to register the deaths of their partners (2).
| The White Paper is also supposed to propose an expansion of the role of registrars, who will be able to provide baby-naming services as an alternative to baptism, and ceremonies for couples wishing to affirm their marriage vows or celebrate key anniversaries. Further changes may mean that registrars are able to conduct civil ceremonies anywhere, rather than only in specially licensed venues, as is the case at the moment (3).
| As politicians and pundits chew over the specifics of these various proposals, almost everybody agrees on one thing: that things have got to change. Shadow home secretary Oliver Letwin wrote a lengthy piece opposing Lord Lester's civil partnerships bill in the Daily Telegraph on 25 January, on the basis that marriage 'has proved itself to be a force for good', yet conceded that some of the restrictions preventing same-sex couples from giving medical consent for a life-threatening operation on behalf of the other partner, for example, 'are prohibitions that few of us today would regard as reasonable, or even humane' (4).
| The traditionalist Telegraph supported Letwin's arguments, praising him for being 'tolerant enough to acknowledge that many couples prefer not to marry' and endorsing the 'humane courtesies' he extends to homosexual couples (5). By contrast, when the Pope dared to suggest, on 29 January, that divorce was 'spreading like a plague' through society and that lawyers should boycott divorce cases, he was roundly castigated for failing to come to terms with the way we live now (6).
| 'The way we live now' forms the backdrop to all the recent debates about the need for a cohabitation law, the need for some kind of legal recognition of homosexual partnerships, the need for couples to have access to a non-religious wedding ceremony - in short, the need for the law to catch up with our lifestyles. And of course we all know that compared to the past, relatively few people get married now, relatively more cohabit, that religion is on the wane and that homosexuality has gone from the status of taboo to almost mainstream. But what is motivating the discussion about the need for complicated legal changes?
| For all the talk about some kind of cohabitation law, there hardly seems to be a movement demanding it. Common sense suggests that unmarried people live together precisely because they don't want to get married. Where has this assumption come from, that they feel that there is something legally lacking in their relationship? As I have argued before, if heterosexual people want their relationship to have some legal standing, the flexibility of marriage today and the ease of divorce means that there is precious little reason for them not to tie the knot. (See Forever - or a day?).
| Gay couples, of course, cannot get married. And as an issue of legal equality, there is a strong argument for allowing them to do so. But in these recent debates, nobody is proposing gay marriage. The angst-ridden discussion about the need for some alternative way of giving legal recognition to gay relationships is led, not by a militant movement of gay couples, but by politicians and policy-makers. The proposed 'civil partnerships register' looks like a nationwide extension of the London Partnerships Register, launched by London mayor Ken Livingstone in September 2001 (7).
| The majority of signatories to this London register have been same-sex couples, I was told - and in mid-December, the register celebrated its hundredth signing. It will be interesting to see how much ongoing appeal the register has, but that the scheme has appealed to about one couple per day in London - where the majority of the UK's gay community lives - does not suggest that people are beating down the doors to sign up.
| The ongoing debate about the need to bring the law in line with 'the way we live now' is presented as an attempt to address the concerns and grievances of unmarried couples about the legal status of their relationships. But it is really about the ruling elite's own problems and insecurities. Politicians and policy-makers are desperately concerned about being out of touch with people and the way they live now, and lacking much imagination, they tend to see a legal solution to everything. So while everybody from the government to the Opposition recognises that marriage is old-fashioned, they also know that as an official recognition of a couple's union, it provides a very clear connection between people and the state. Cohabitants, by contrast, have only a relationship to one another - and even if this does not bother the couple concerned, it bothers the authorities.
| Hence the call for a new law - whatever the specifics of that law may be. The notion that the elite needs to recognise the way we live now and then make up a law to suit it is a way of saying, 'we don't care what you do, so long as it has some official connection with us'. As Oliver Letwin points out, this has some worrying consequences in terms of allowing further official control over private life. 'Marriage is clear cut', he writes, 'whereas weaker alternatives would involve the state inquiring into the length or type of people's relationships; an increase in intrusion into our lives'. People cohabit to have a relationship with one other person - there are good reasons not to invite the state into bed as well.
| The kind of 'catch-up' laws currently being debated are not only intrusive - there is something quite pathetic about them. A society that actively promotes marriage is at least promoting a set of values that go beyond immediate lifestyle choice. The promotion of marriage gives the message that it is good for society that people make lifelong commitments to one another and, implicitly, that they have children.
| The debate about recognising cohabitation, on the other hand, simply puts across the message that, provided your relationship is deemed healthy and wholesome, society endorses whatever you want to do right this minute now, just because it's good for you. The endorsement of all kinds of relationships just for the sake of connecting the state with people only highlights the emptiness of the ruling elite's vision, and its lack of clarity about the values it does want to promote.
| If people want to get married, fine. If they don't, fine. That is the way we live now - regardless of what the government does or does not do to the law.
| Read on:
Gay is the new straight, by Jennie Bristow
Forever - or a day?, by Jennie Bristow
spiked-issue: Love and sex
(1) 'Gay marriage' bill launched, BBC News Online, 11 January 2002
(2) Gay partners will be able to register deaths, The Times (London), 28 January 2002
(3) Civil wedding rules 'to be relaxed', BBC News Online, 22 January 2002
(4) Marriage works, so what is the point of a pale imitation?, Daily Telegraph, 25 January 2002
(5) Daily Telegraph, 25 January 2002
(6) Pope tells lawyers to boycott divorce, BBC News Online, 29 January 2002
(7) Gay is the new straight, Jennie Bristow, 7 September 2001
(8) Marriage works, so what is the point of a pale imitation?, Daily Telegraph, 25 January 2002
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