s made a right?
Imagine the outcry if the government prohibited black people from getting married, and established a separate partnership register for non-whites.
Norm believes that the logic of the argument can’t be faulted. Well, the argument surely can be faulted, because the concept of marriage has, at least until recently, always contained an implication about the sex of those taking part. My dictionary (Collins, 1991) defines marriage as, 1. the state or relationship of being husband and wife, 2. the legal union or contract made by a man and a woman to live as husband and wife. The current arrangement attempts to honour this meaning, while allowing gays the same benefits through civil partnerships.
I’m always wary of analogies between race and sex (and class), and Tatchell’s example isn’t about to change my mind. A prohibition on black people getting married would be a purely arbitrary (and racist) curb on their rights: that gays can’t get married is a consequence of the fact that marriage has always been a union between two people of different sex. Race is irrelevant to marriage: sex isn’t. Do I really need to point that out? And does doing so necessarily mark me down as a homophobe, as Tatchell seems to imply?
Maybe things’ll change. They probably will. But for the moment civil partnership seems a reasonable compromise, and a notable step forward.
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