Even with the Budget coming up, I can’t resist having a bit of a polite rant over this letter, which appears in today’s Times newspaper:

Sir, At the time of the passage of the Civil Partnerships Act 2004 we were reassured by the Government that there was a clear distinction between such partnerships and marriage. Churches were told that they would not be compelled to “marry” homosexuals. With the passage of Lord Alli’s [sic] amendment allowing civil partnerships to be conducted on church premises this distinction has been broken. Yet another example of creeping legislation that is often hasty, ill conceived and opportunistically tacked on to existing Bills without a proper chance for scrutiny.

If there is a genuine need for a change in the law this should be done properly by revisiting the Civil Partnerships Act.

Yesterday Christian Concern for Our Nation delivered a petition to the Government, signed by more than 6,000 church leaders and Christians, asking it to reject the amendment, which they believe could coerce clergy into acting against their conscience.

How long will it be before church ministers are threatened with legal proceedings if they perform marriages between a man and a woman, but not civil partnerships?

Lord Carey of Clifton
House of Lords

The mendacity on display here would be breathtaking, coming as it does from a former Archbishop of Canterbury, were it not for the reference to Nadine Dorries’ buddies, Christian Concern for Our Nation, who are well known to be habitual bullshitters.

Lord Ali’s amendment to the Civil Partnership’s Act, which has cross-party support, in no way seeks to compel churches to marry homosexuals.

What it does do, as is explained pretty well here by Thinking Anglicans, is start the process of removing a legal prohibition that currently prevents those religious denominations that don’t go in for homophobic prejudice, the Quakers, Unitarians and Liberal Jews, from providing religious civil partnership services in line with their particular beliefs.

Lord Ali’s amendment, in fact, includes a clause that states, explicitly, that:

(4) In section 6A, after subsection (3), insert—

“( ) For the avoidance of doubt, nothing in this Act places an obligation on religious organisations to host civil partnerships if they do not wish to do so.”

And my clear understanding is that one of the key reasons that  the amendment has be put forward is precisely because it has been requested by, amongst others, the Quakers.

As should be apparent from analysis provided by Thinking Anglicans, Lord Ali’s amendment only goes part of the way to affording the Quakers, and others, the liberties they’re seeking. Further amendments will need to be made to the clause 11 of  The Marriages and Civil Partnerships (Approved Premises) Regulations 2005, which currently states that:

(1) Any proceedings conducted on approved premises shall not be religious in nature.

(2) In particular, the proceedings shall not—

(a) include extracts from an authorised religious marriage service or from sacred religious texts;
(b) be led by a minister of religion or other religious leader;
(c) involve a religious ritual or series of rituals;
(d) include hymns or other religious chants; or,
(e) include any form of worship.

Contrary to the view being put about by those opposed to Lord Ali’s amendment, the fact that it makes no alterations to this particular regulatory clause is not a flaw or fault in the amendment itself but simply a matter of parliamentary convention. these regulations are contained in, and were passed using, a statutory instrument and that, in turn, is the mechanism that needs to be used to repeal this purely regulatory clause.

As ever, those opposed to Lord Ali’s amendment claim to be defending ‘religious liberty’ but if religious liberty is to have any genuine meaning then it must surely follow that each religion, and each denomination within those religions, must be free to define their key sacraments, including marriage, in their own terms.

While secular law, quite rightly, sets out a clear position on what it will, and will not, recognised as a marriage or civil partnership in terms of both being civil institutions to which certain legal rights and obligations are attached by law, it does not, in the case of heterosexual unions, take any particular view on what can, and cannot, be sanctioned under religious ‘law’. The state does not, for example, recognise polygamy and, indeed, prohibits the registration under civil law of polygamous marriages. However, where a polygamous marriages are permitted under religious law, as is the case in Islam, it does not interfere with the granting of a purely religious sanction for such relationships.

If the secular law can tolerate religiously-sanctioned polygamy, without interference, then it surely has no justification for interfering in the question of whether or not a particular religion/denomination wishes to afford a religious sanction to a civil partnership between two individuals of the same gender.

As such, the secular law has no business imposing restrictions such as those incorporated in clause 11 of The Marriages and Civil Partnerships (Approved Premises) Regulations 2005, a clause that illegitimately places secular constraints on the nature of the sacraments that religious denominations can offer irrespective of the beliefs of that denomination.

If you genuinely believe in religious liberty then it follows, logically, that you should support Lord Ali’s amendment. To do otherwise, while claiming to defend religious liberty is simply hypocrisy.

Reader comments

1. Unity

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2. Richard Bartholomew

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