Fortress England
The U.K. ignores Canada’s progressive stance on same-sex marriage
Gilles Marchildon
Canada recognizes two British women who married each other as
legal spouses. Their home country, however, does not.
Instead, the U.K. government is treating the couple as registered
domestic partners.
Sue Wilkinson and Celia Kitzinger celebrated their love, their
13-year relationship and their commitment by getting married while
one of them held a university teaching position in B.C. three
years ago.
Their return home to the U.K. has been challenging. They launched
a legal challenge in order to be treated in the same way as an
opposite-sex couple — a straight couple’s legal marriage
would have automatically been recognized by the U.K.
In not-so-jolly old England, the government created a separate
legal category for same-sex partners. The 2004 Civil Partnership
Act came into force in late 2005, and now same-sex unions performed
outside the U.K. are automatically deemed to be a “civil
partnership.”
Wilkinson and Kitzinger’s court battle was dealt a devastating
blow on July 31. Lord Justice Mark Potter, president of the High
Court’s family division, concluded that, according to common
law, marriage was between a man and a woman. He then dismissed
the women’s claim. Adding insult to injury, the couple was
ordered to pay the government’s legal costs — the
equivalent of about $50,000 Cdn.
In his decision, Justice Potter shows an almost childlike fixation
on the plumbing of sexuality. Potter states that same-sex legal
relationships can’t be called marriage “not because
they are considered inferior to the institution of marriage, but
because, as a matter of objective fact and common understanding....
they are indeed different.”
His decision is particularly insulting because he suggests marriage
is mainly about making babies and raising children. This line
of reasoning flies in the face of two inescapable realities: not
all heterosexual couples want to or can produce children, and
some same-sex couples do have children and raise families.
Wilkinson declared: “Denying our marriage does nothing to
protect heterosexual marriage. It simply upholds... inequality.”
She said the decision is painful but vowed to appeal to Britain’s
Court of Appeal. The couple’s lawyer, Joanne Sawyer of the
human rights group Liberty, said the decision “will in due
course be viewed as being out of step with contemporary values.”
Finances will be a challenge for the women. They have to foot
current and future legal bills on their own with the help of community
fundraising and through their website (www.equalmarriagerights.org).
This latest British court decision reflects an unfortunate trend
over the past few weeks following decisions against same-sex marriage
by courts in New York, Georgia and Washington.
Canadians are proudly celebrating equal marriage as part of our
country’s commitment to equality, but these recent court
decisions beyond our borders show that Canada is still in the
vanguard with respect to human rights.
Here in Canada, opponents of equality are not comfortable seeing
our country ahead of the pack. Encouraged by these decisions abroad,
they will increase their efforts to roll back human rights here.
Gilles Marchildon is executive director of Egale Canada (www.egale.ca),
a non-profit organization that advances equality and justice for
lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans-identified people, and their
families, across Canada. |
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