LGBT activists have been demanding to be treated the same as heterosexual couples regarding inheritance rights, marriage rights, hospital visitation rights and more.
They mostly have succeeded, with the U.S. Supreme Court creating same-sex marriage in 2015 while four justices condemned the ruling as unrelated to the U.S. Constitution.
But now a U.K. court has ordered that a relationship heretofore reserved for LGBT members – civil partnerships – must be made available to heterosexual couples, all in the name of human rights.
The decision by the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom left the Christian Institute disappointed.
"This is yet another fundamental attack on marriage from a court system that seems determined to do all it can to undermine it," said Ciarán Kelly, deputy director for the institute.
"The couple who brought this case objected to what they called the 'sexist trappings' of marriage. But that is to fundamentally misrepresent what marriage is about. Marriage – with its public promises of lifelong faithfulness – is the gold standard of commitment. It is beneficial for the individuals involved and for society as a whole. With this ruling the court has given its backing to 'marriage lite' – all the benefits of marriage but without the responsibilities."
At present in the U.K., the law allows heterosexual couples only to marry, while same-sex duos can marry or take up a civil partnership. The ruling in favor of Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan will create pressure on the government to change the law itself.
The judges' ruling stated: "The interests of the community in denying those different-sex couples who have a genuine objection to being married the opportunity to enter into a civil partnership are unspecified and not easy to envisage."
The Guardian of London reported Steinfeld and Keidan claimed the institution of marriage is patriarchal and sexist. But they were denied a civil partnership because they are not the same sex.
The judges said the government "should have eliminated the inequality of treatment between same-sex and opposite-sex partners when the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act came into force in 2013," according to the report.
"This could have been done by abolishing civil partnerships or by instantaneously extending them to different-sex couples … Taking time to evaluate whether to abolish or extend could never amount to a legitimate aim for the continuance of the discrimination."
The Guardian reported the lone jurisdiction in the British Isles that permits opposite-sex civil partnerships is the Isle of Man. In countries that allow it, including South Africa, New Zealand and the Netherlands, there appears to be a demand.
The report said that in the Netherlands last year, there were 64,400 marriages and 17,900 civil partnerships.
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