By the time you read this, a small but crucial piece of British history will have been made. In the Visitor Centre of the Greater London Authority, two couples – one pair of gay men and one pair of lesbians – will have formally declared their relationships in the London Partnerships Register. This is not legally binding, even in questions of inheritance, and it is certainly not marriage – but it is a start.
It is a public declaration of commitment between two gay people, and its instigator, the London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, sees it as a symbolic step affirming the equality of gay and straight couples. More importantly, it is the starting pistol for a re-examination of marriage in our post-religious age. In Catalonia in Spain, same-sex civil unions were first recognised in 1998; the scheme was so popular that it spread rapidly to more than 30 cities across the country. It will spread in Britain, too.
The opponents of gay marriage insist that gay people are more promiscuous and will make a further mockery of the ideal of marriage as a lifelong monogamous commitment.
Well, research does indicate that gay people tend to have more sexual partners and that they have fewer long-term relationships. But could this impermanence be the result of society denying gay couples the social glue that holds other couples together – marriage, children, and so on? Grant them marriage rights, and gays will have strong relationships.
Don’t take my word for it. Where gay marriages have been allowed, there has been a decline in the divorce rate and a resurgence in marriage. Darren Spedale has conducted an exhaustive study of the Danish example, where de facto same-sex marriage has existed for more than a decade. In Denmark, the gay divorce rate is one-fifth of the divorce rate for heterosexuals. And that’s not all. Following the introduction of gay marriage, the rate of heterosexual marriage rose by 10 per cent and the rate of heterosexual divorce fell by 12 per cent.
Whenever I hear rants against gay marriage, I picture a very old and wonderfully camp gay couple I knew. They met when they served in the army during the Second World War and were inseparable from then on, despite the vile prejudice (and the criminalisation of their love) that they had to confront. Early on, the elder of the two lost touch with his family, who disapproved of his partner. However, when he died, this long-absent family claimed all his belongings and insisted that his partner sell the house the couple had shared for 20 years so that they could claim “their” share of it.
And another example: the gay partner of one of the men slaughtered in the homophobic nail-bomb attack in Soho last year received nothing – no compensation whatsoever – whereas the husband of one of the heterosexual victims did.
The idea that marriage is a “naturally” heterosexual institution is true only if we concentrate on a very narrow geographical and historical frame. As valuable research by the US academic Paul Halsall shows, same-sex marriages have occurred in so many historical and cultural contexts that the idea of marriage as irrevocably “straight” is simply based on ignorance.
Gay marriages have occurred before in this country. In Mother Clap’s Molly House, a study that inspired Mark Ravenhill’s play now at the National Theatre, Rictor Norton presents evidence that, in the late 1720s, elaborate gay weddings took place in London. Some of these were mockeries, but others were between people who were “deeply in love” and who then lived together as monogamous couples. A century later, a gay Church of England priest called John Church conducted gay weddings as specifically religious ceremonies.
Textual evidence of gay marriage spans the continents and centuries. Aristotle discusses one couple, Philolaus and Diocles, who capped their lifelong marriage by being buried together. Li Yu, a popular 17th-century Chinese writer, describes gay marriage as a common custom in the Fujian province.
Livingstone has long acknowledged all of this. He has always been ahead of the game on gay issues. He was lambasted, in his first incarnation as head of the Greater London Council, for distributing reassuring and candid pamphlets for gay, lesbian and confused teenagers. Looking at these pamphlets today, the most extreme sentiment they contain seems to be a young girl’s defence of her gay father: “It feels kinda weird, but I love him anyway”. Compare this to what most teenagers can now view on the internet, and these pamphlets look almost laughably tame.
Now Livingstone is shattering a few more political taboos, clearing the way for partnership registration, and eventually marriage, to be part of the mainstream politics of the next generation.
Interestingly, Livingstone wasn’t the first major figure in British politics to adopt this stance. It has gone largely unnoticed that the recognition of gay partnerships has been official Liberal Democrat policy since last year (they stop short of advocating marriage). The Lib Dem policy would prove even more progressive than the mayor’s plans, with partnerships that were binding in matters of inheritance, pensions and succession of tenancy. And Steven Norris, the vice-chairman of the Conservative Party and a tireless exponent of gay rights, backed gay marriage when he was first appointed to his job. Now even Iain Duncan Smith, the Tory leadership hopeful, seems to be retreating on support for Section 28, which he has admitted was a symbol of his party’s hatred for gays.
The government has been reluctant to move on this issue, saying only that there are “no plans” to introduce gay marriage. Tony Blair has been cautious about trumpeting his largely excellent record on gay issues, mainly because of vehement warnings from his friend Bill Clinton. Clinton’s first year in office was derailed by his early campaign to end the ban on gays in the military. Clinton apparently warned the Prime Minister that this lost him a huge amount of support and goodwill for comparatively little gain. Blair has correspondingly underplayed all of his moves on gay rights, which include easing immigration rules to make it easier for gay partners to enter the country, equalising the age of consent, promoting the first openly gay men into the cabinet and trying to abolish Section 28.
Such caution is a shame, not least because this is an issue on which Blair and the Labour Party membership are united. Nor would the policy necessarily prove unpopular with the wider public. When, earlier this year, registration of gay partnerships was introduced in Germany – a country widely seen as more socially conservative than Britain – a poll by the Enmid institute showed that 52 per cent favoured same-sex partnership, rising to 82 per cent among those all-important disillusioned voters under the age of 30.
Blair fears religious objections to gay marriage. (Even the usually liberal Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, is inflexible: “Marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman. I don’t think it helps to confuse terms.”) Yet in today’s secular Britain, only 7 per cent of us go to a church, synagogue or mosque. The atheism we increasingly subscribe to will inevitably affect our attitude towards Judaeo-Christian institutions.
In 50 years’ time, a gay married couple rummaging through old copies of the New Statesman will stumble across this article and – I hope – be astonished that gays could have been so mistreated, just as the stories of imprisoning gay people only a few decades ago seem unbelievable now. We have come a long way on gay rights, but we have an awful lot further to travel. When we write the history of that journey, Livingstone will have a special place – and there’s still time for Blair to get an honourable mention, too.
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