Why are UK civil partnerships not allowed to be held in a church or have a religious element? I can understand churches, etc., not being *compelled* to perform them, but is the UK gov't still that tied up with the CoE?
To take your points one at a time...
1) The CoE is still an established church. The 26 most senior bishops (Canterbury, York, London, Durham and Winchester; and the 21 longest-serving Diocesan bishops not including those five) get an automatic seat in the House of Lords; and it's not uncommon for retired bishops to be given a life peerage so they can continue to it after retirement. In terms of absolute numbers they're a small minority, but their influence is sufficiently strong that it's hard to get a bill through the HoL if the Lords Spiritual are vehemently opposed to it.
There is a mechanism by which the Commons can use the
Parliament Acts to force a bill into law despite the opposition of the Lords, but it's regarded as something of a "nuclear option" and has only been employed seven times since it was first enacted in 1911.
As a result, the act which created Civil Partnerships in the UK was stripped of all terminology which might be construed as being religiously loaded, including the word "marriage", and prevented the service itself from taking place on religious premises. This last restriction was removed by the Equality Act last year, but the provision which removed it does not come into force unless the Home Secretary makes an order allowing it. She is now looking into whether or not this is the right time to do so.
it is worth pointing out two additional things here: (a) even if this is allowed, the service will still have to be performed by a civil registrar rather than a priest, and (b) once the actual service is over, the
only legal difference between a CP and marriage is that you can't directly cite adultery as grounds for divorce. In all other circumstances the law requires them to be treated exactly the same. I'd still prefer it to be
called marriage, but from the point of view of legal rights, the battle is 99% won.
2) This may be the case, but the impression I get is that civil marriage in the US is regarded as "second class" by a lot of the population, and that most of the opposition to gay marriage comes from the churches, even though no-one is proposing forcing the church to perform any service it doesn't want to. Which is why I propose ending state recognition of religious marriages: once that occurs, the legal distinction between marriage and a civil union would completely evaporate and there would no longer be a "religious" barrier to allowing gay marriage.
3) You're probably reading the Daily Mail, which is even further to the right than Faux News. I've never seen any other mainstream UK paper put scare quotes around the word 'gay'. See
this post.
