Same sex relationships should have the same legal status as heterosexual relationships under EU law

The EU works for equality within society in Europe: what more brings about equality and is a stepping stone to lessen discrimination against the gay and lesbian community.

The EU places individual rights at the heart of its mission by demanding that all member states sign up to the European Convention on Human Rights. This is a legal declaration enshrining in law everyone’s right to life, freedom and self-determination. Although the ECHR does not mention same sex relationships explicitly, it does prohibit discrimination by institutions and the list of categories it gives is non-exhaustive. It is time the EU accepts that by not giving homosexual couples equal rights it denies them the right to self-determination and family life that all other EU citizens enjoy. The EU has an obligation to ensure that its member states respect the rights of all their citizens.

Introducing the civic register was a humanitarian step forward to give gay or lesbian couples the facility to protect their partners in cases of bereavement , how could anyone disagree we in Liverpool did so before national legislation

Cllr Steve Radford Liberal Party

“The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.” [[Cf. Loving v. Virginia: In Sullivan 90]].

People have the right to pursue happiness in a wide variety of forms, subject to this right’s compatibility with like liberty for others and marriage is a central institution by which people pursue happiness.

Marriage provides important benefits to individuals, including emotional stability and economic security.Marriage also benefits society by encouraging deep commitments between individuals, promoting the healthy rearing of children, and preserving the bonds among individuals and communities that maintain social stability (and enable the individual pursuit of happiness). (We should promote that which benefits individuals and society.)

Therefore, we should promote marriage.

Gays and lesbians are unsuited for opposite-sex marriage, but there is no prima facie reason why gays and lesbians could not receive the same benefits from same-sex marriage that straights receive from opposite-sex marriage.

Allowing gays and lesbians to marry would aid society by encouraging them to live more stable, mainstream lives.

Allowing gays and lesbians to marry would promote the institution of marriage by making marriage the societal ideal for all citizens. Therefore, we should allow and promote same-sex marriage. [[Andrew Sullivan, ed., Same-Sex Marriage: Pro and Con (New York: Vintage), 1997, pp.146-154]].

Marriage is an oppressive social institution which damages those within it and harms the children whose parents are married. Marriage, however, is also an institution which is continually changing with society’s changes.

If homosexuals were able to marry, their marriages would be more akin to gay and lesbian relationships in their current form than an oppressive traditional marriage. By allowing more homosexuals (who are naturally more liberal) to marry, they might be able to change social attitudes and practices towards, and within the institution, strengthening it and making it healthier both for society and those who are married.

For this reason, we should grant homosexuals as well as heterosexuals the right to marry in order to change society for the better.

Civil marriage is a matter to be regulated by the state, not via any sort of religious involvement. In a secular society, we should not be pandering to religious zealots allowing them to apply religious morality on citizens. The EU is made up of a vast range of different faiths and beliefs, and we should not allow one faith to dictate what citizens can and cannot do.

The Unitarian church in the UK and overseas supports the principle of equality and is calling for an end to this discrimination.

However, I think there are important things to consider about marriage:

1. Marriage should be a private matter anyway. It is nobody’s business but my own whether I am married or to whom (and I would definitely never tell my employer my marital status, unlike many idiotic women who expect to be employed under their husbands’ names). Private lives should be kept private;

2. The main traditional reasons for getting married are not appropriate arguments for gay couples. Marriage is traditionally seen as a means of retaining or transferring property between families and as a means of securing the birth of heirs to family fortunes. This is not an argument against gay marriage but it is a reason to consider the meaning of marriage in the first place. If gay marriage brings about change to the way in which men treat their wives as their property and fail to ensure that they pay their way (resulting in women being effectively useless to the economy if divorced), then it will be a good thing.

We must, however, ensure that what remains of the legal concept of “spousal privilege” and regarding a spouse as “next of kin” are abolished (your next of kin should be your nearest relative on your mother’s side) and that married women are banned from using their husbands’ names as is the law in Italy and Quebec. We also need to ensure that both partners have a legal requirement to support themselves financially until they reach State retirement age and that all benefits, taxes and pensions are disagregated.

By claiming homosexuals do not have the right to marry is equivalent to saying you cant marry someone because of your race, colour, religion, or nationality. It’s wrong, and NO one has the right to revoke an individuals happiness from them. By revoking the right of happiness you are taking away a persons right to “freedom of expression”, thus making it unlawful under EU law. Everyone has the right to express themselves and that includes celebrating ones love for one another through marriage.

Humans lost the right to claim that ‘natural’ things are best when we started playing God ourselves. Contraception and IVF both go against the natural reproductive processes (either by limiting or enhancing them) but we accept that their benefits to the happiness of the individuals involved far outweigh any outdated concepts of natural law. The same applies to same sex marriage. Although these relationships will not produce offspring they will significantly improve the quality of life of the individuals involved. The state should be promoting the wellbeing of its citizens wherever possible and this is an example of where it could do so. Also, allowing same sex marriage will not lead to the death of the species as no one reproduces any more. It will not make more people gay any more than not allowing same sex marriage makes more people straight.

Why should tradition be a stumbling block to progress? It used to be a tradition that only white middle class males could vote because people thought that woman, working class people or black people voting would lead to an erosion of society. The concept of a strong and loving family is surely more important than a bond between a man and a woman. Same sex couples are just as able to form loving families than a mixed sex couple therefore some vague notion of ‘tradition’ should be no barrier to a couples happiness.

The reason we don’t allow the types of marriage stated is because of issues of consent. A child cannot consent to be married, in cases of incest there is huge potential for grooming to have occurred before the age of consent and there is also a large amount of coercion involved in polygamy. In contrast same sex marriage would be between consenting adults and is therefore not analogous to the “non-standard” marriages mentioned. Rather than losing the moral high ground we would strengthen it as we would gain clear criteria (adult and consenting) for what makes a relationship acceptable.

Again, a completely unsubstanciated argument. Why is marriage opressive and harmful to children? Perhaps the traditional structure of marriage (two parents – female stays at home and male breadwinner) is a outdated and damages the work of feminists etc. but very few marriages are strictly like this now anyway. The modern family unit often comprises of two working parents and retired grandparents or even half brothers, sisters, and step parents.