It’s only one small step to marriage equality
Nor, as Jackie Kemp claims, is it particularly difficult to draft the law. Civil partnership required 430 pages of legislation: a major task undertaken for one reason only – to deny same-sex couples access to real marriage by creating a separate, segregated system. In contrast, opening marriage to same-sex couples will be a much simpler bill. So much so that, if the Scottish Government were not writing the bill, the Equality Network would be preparing a draft ourselves.
Why do this? Because a country that denies a minority access to the institutions that everyone else enjoys is perpetuating discrimination. Creating a simulacrum of the institution and segregating the disadvantaged minority into that instead is not the answer.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdEnforced segregation of a minority entrenches discrimination, as much for sexual orientation as for better known cases of racial segregation.
The same choices should be available to all.
Tim Hopkins, Equality Network, Edinburgh