Marriage rights

Michael Ryan (Letters, 16 September) asks why same-sex couples are not willing to accept the “compromise”, as he puts it, of the segregated system of civil partnerships.

The answer is that civil partnership was not a compromise, it was a step towards equal treatment in the law for same-sex couples, but no-one ever considered it to be true equality.

Imagine if the government said: “Some people still don’t like mixed race marriages. So if you’re a mixed race couple, we’ll ban you from marrying.

“But we will let you register something called a civil partnership, with almost the same legal rights.”

Everyone would see that for what it is – blatant discrimination against mixed-race couples.

Almost all countries that previously introduced civil partnership for same-sex couples went on, within a few years, to introduce full same-sex marriage.

It is right that Scotland should also take that final step to full equality and fairness in the law for same-sex couples.

Religious bodies can legally (and some do) discriminate against same-sex couples. That is not a compromise either – it is a right guaranteed by UK law and by the European Convention on Human Rights. That will not change, and so no religious body will be required to conduct same-sex marriages.

Tim Hopkins

Equality Network

Bernard Street

Edinburgh

When will our legislators and others come to realise that the debate on same-sex marriage is simply semantic and pedantic? Few nowadays will deny that men and women are equal, but no-one can deny that, by definition, they are different.

By definition, marriage is the union of two people with the intention of begetting and bearing children and for this the couple must, of necessity, comprise a man and a woman.

While some married couples may be unable to have or may choose not to have children the failure to consummate the marriage gives legal grounds for annulment of that marriage.

It is a simple physical impossibility for a same-sex couple to achieve this result and even our current legislators will be unable to alter this situation no matter what form of words any legislation might use.

If the protagonists for same-sex marriage succeed in usurping the use of the word “marriage” in the same way that the word “gay” has lost its original meaning, the form may change but the substance will remain.

What might become equal will still be different and nothing can change that fact. The antagonists will have to find a new word to describe what is now called marriage.

Ian A Reid

Ochiltree

Dunblane