Just Married
by Julie Hawrishok
Reporting by Julian Earwaker in England, Julie Hawrishok in Canada, Brian Deming in the US, and Ben Sandilands in Australia.
Andy Forrest from London is happy about the new year. He’s got something special to celebrate – he’s getting married. In January, he and his partner, John, will be among the first gay and lesbian couples in Britain to marry. On 5 December 2005, the Civil Partnership Act, passed by the British parliament in 2004, became law. It stated that the first day on which homosexual couples could form civil partnerships was 20 December in Northern Ireland and 21 December in Wales and England.
Having been a couple for 22 years, Andy and John have been looking forward to their wedding for a long time. They want to share the start of their legal partnership with family and friends.
Forrest, 47, is a communications officer for Stonewall, a British organization that campaigns for gay rights. “Ten years ago, [getting married] was just a dream,” Forrest told Spotlight. “We couldn’t see anything like this happening.”
The law marks an important change for many homosexual couples. “It’s such a relief … especially regarding security for the future. Things like inheritance tax and pensions were a real worry for many people,” Forrest explains. “But it’s also the social impact of having their partnership recognized, that it’s legal and has equal status to marriage. That means a lot.”
Under this new law, same-sex couples will be taxed the same as married couples, and they will be recognized as each other’s next of kin. Their partnership will be recognized for purposes of life insurance, tenancy rights, responsibility for a partner’s children, custody rights and provision of reasonable maintenance for civil partners and children.
The Anglican Church has been nearly alone in expressing opposition to the Civil Partnership Act. The government deliberately avoided any reference to the word “marriage” in the new law. Opponents are mainly concerned that the same-sex partnerships will destroy the traditional family unit.
In Canada, one finds a similar situation as in Britain. Canada’s Civic Marriage Act, passed on 20 July 2005, officially made same-sex unions legal across the country. Marriage, once defined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as “the lawful union of one man and one woman”, has been changed to “the lawful union of two persons, to the exclusion of all others”.
While same-sex marriage is now legal in Canada, it took a lot of time, effort and political influence to make it happen. A long-time same-sex marriage supporter, Kevin Bourassa, 47, from Toronto, made the news five years ago when he married his partner, Joe Varnell, in a Toronto church. They were the country’s first married gay couple.
Yet Bourassa and Varnell also faced some problems. The provincial government of Ontario refused to register their marriage – a necessary step in all countries to make marriage legal. In an effort to bring the legality of same-sex unions to the forefront, the couple became full-time supporters of marriage equality, even dipping into their retirement savings to help the cause. So when the new legislation was passed last summer, the couple was extremely happy.
Naturally, there is also opposition to same-sex marriage in Canada. One opponent is William Gairdner of Enshrine Marriage Canada. This non-profit organization is working to have the law changed back, to support marriage only between a man and a woman. “It’s a tough fight,” Gairdner told Spotlight. “Once the government passes a law, people tend to walk away from opposing it.”
With same-sex marriage now legal in Canada, there may be some opportunity for profit. Because Canada has no residency requirements for marriage, same-sex marriages could become one of the country’s top exports.
Last May, Lynn Warren and Alex, Ali, who live in Los Angeles, were in Canada. These two American men were contestants on The Amazing Race 7, a popular reality television show on Canadian TV. When an Ottawa radio station found out that the couple wanted to get married, they hosted an extravagant wedding – called The Amazing Wedding – for the pair.
R. Bruce McDonald, co-founder of the Canadian Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, says it’s difficult to determine exactly how many same-sex couples have come to Canada to get married, but he believes there have been quite a few. “From the numbers I’ve seen, more than half of the same-sex marriages are from out-of-country. Most of them come from the US,” McDonald says.
In the United States, the topic of same-sex marriage is indeed rather complicated. On 17 May 2004, at one minute past midnight, the middle-aged Marcia Hams and her long-time partner Susan Shepard said “I do” in Cambridge, Massachusetts, becoming the first same-sex couple in the United States to be legally married. About 600 other gay and lesbian couples in Massachusetts were married that same day.
The even marked a milestone in the United State. It was greeted with celebrations by homosexual couples, and with alarm by conservative Americans who were shocked at the idea of same-sex marriage. A year and half later, the legal state of same-sex marriages is a mixture of changing laws and court rulings that vary widely from state to state. Marriage regulations are not controlled by the US federal government. Same-sex marriages are recognized only in Massachusetts, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, New Jersey, Vermont and the District of Columbia recognize civil unions or domestic partnerships. These civil unions allow gay couples to enter into marriage-like relationships; but legally, they are not married. Some states, such as New York, have no laws either forbidding same-sex marriage or recognizing it. On the other hand, most states have laws or constitutional amendments that forbid such unions.
Conservative groups in the US want to establish laws prohibiting same-sex marriages. As a result of conservative lobbying, citizens in 18 states have already voted to define marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman. Later this year, citizens in Alabama, South Carolina, South Dakota and Tennessee will vote on whether to make the prohibition of same-sex marriages a part of their state’s constitution.
Naturally, some opponents of same-sex marriage are protesting not only on a state level, but nationally, too. Many conservative groups are even pushing for an amendment to the US Constitution. Efforts towards such an amendment have already stated, and President Bush says he supports it.
As the law stands now, Massachusetts couple Bruce Bell and George Smart, both 55, are legally married. The state currently has more than 6,000 same-sex couples registered. Bell and Smart got married 18 months ago “because they could”, Bell told Spotlight. He and Smart have been together for 28 years. Now that they are married, they enjoy the “psychological and emotional feeling that we are recognized”. As well as a few financial benefits. “We get a couple’s discount on auto insurance,” he explains.
For the past 20 years or so, good experiences with same-sex marriage were also common in Australia. In fact, such unions never got much attention at all from the media. While same-sex unions had no strict legal recognition, they were often used by the courts as evidence of a de facto relationship in disputes over wills or property settlements.
Recently, however, same-sex marriage also became a hot topic in Australia’s media. Prime Minister John Howard enacted the Marriage Legislation Amendment Bill of 2004 to limit the meaning of marriage under national laws to an institution between a man and a woman. For more than a century before the law, Australia’s national marriage laws had never actually defined marriage.
The Australian Marriage Equality and Community Action Against Homophobia lobbying group wants the law to be repealed. Luke Gahan, a spokesman for the organization, told Spotlight that while Australia still recognizes de facto relationships among homosexual couples, he wants the real thing. Gahan, who’s living in Sydney with his partner Matthew Culleton, is planning their marriage in Vancouver, Canada. But Australian law will not recognize the union as legal, because the marriage will be performed in a foreign country.
Gahan will continue to work towards the law’s repeal. He believes in marriage and says it “shows the world our commitment”. “As a community, we [gats and lesbians] have an opportunity to modernize marriage around the globe,” he says.