2015 - Gay Marriage In The UK

Progress was never said to be swift. But baby steps forward are steps forward, nonetheless.

The BBC reported yesterday on their website that the UK government have revealed plans to legalise Gay Marriage by the year 2015. Okay! So that is four years for appeals, debates and protests from both sides. There may even be more protests and demonstrations (because we always need more of those!). We all know how certain individuals get swept up in the drama of any change.

Civil Unions have been available to gay couples in the UK for a few years now. The first such Union was on the 5th of December, 2005. The plan is to let a whole decade slip by before giving law abiding human beings the legal “right” everyone else seems to have. But again, I have to remind myself, it is still progress.

And it is more progress than has been seen in Australia, I am very sad to say. Australia does recognise gay couples, as “de facto”, but there is no real equivalent to a Civil Partnership, never mind a marriage.

It seems out and out dumb, even tedious, to me that gay marriage has not yet been deemed “OK” by the upper echelons of our society. Every relatively intelligent person knows that it is only a matter of time, even if it is two or three generations away, before gay marriage will be legalised right across the western world. Traditionalists (Ha!) and bigots can resist as much as they like, but their children and their grandchildren see the world differently.

Even taking away the notion of right or wrong, it will happen, simply because society is evolving.

I can’t help but get angry when I think how I am a decent person, contributing to society, and yet I can’t legally and officially demonstrate and mark my love for my partner who I have spent almost 12 years of my life with.

I hear arguments that Gay Marriage shall destroy the sanctity of Marriage. It makes no sense, then, when I see straight couples getting married and divorced, married again, divorced again, and so on and so on, rinsing and repeating, while cheating on each other, and crying on the shoulders of their “gay best friends” who are secretly cringing at the abuse of privileges before them.

Then the religious dictators and fanboys step in, with their own ideas of who and what God is, based on a limited education and a further limited social and cultural exposure. Except they still are “OK” with athiests getting married, as long as their straight…

Wherever you are, whoever you are, equality is something we should all fight for. Tomorrow they may come after you too…