There was a high profile court case in the UK this week. A gay couple has been turned away from a small hotel by the proprietors who, as hard line “Christians”, refused to have “immoral” goings on in their establishment.
The judges’ decision, as explained by The Guardian, is rather interesting. The hoteliers claimed that they were not biased against people for being gay, but rather were unwilling to have immoral activities in their hotel. To support their case they cites instances where they had turned away heterosexual couples who were unmarried.
However, the gay couple claimed that they were married. They had a proper civil partnership, blessed by the UK government. The hoteliers refused to recognize that as a legitimate marriage, and it was on this basis that the judges ruled that there was indeed discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. As far as the judges were concerned, there was no material difference between a heterosexual “marriage” and and a gay or lesbian “civil partnership”.
The implications of this for UK law, which currently holds that only heterosexuals can have a “marriage” and only gays and lesbians can have a “civil partnership” have not gone unnoticed. Hopefully sometime soon the government will put an end to this silly division.
You may be wondering what would have happened if one or both of the couple had been trans. Under the Gender Recognition Act trans people who have undergone full gender reassignment are legally members of their preferred gender. Consequently, if they are heterosexual in their preferred gender, they can contract a “marriage”. So I can marry a man, or have a civil partnership with a woman. However, under the recent Equality Act (authored by the previous Labour government and rubber stamped by the incoming LibCon coalition) it would have been perfectly legal for the hoteliers to have refused admission to any trans person, whether married, in a civil partnership or single. The “Equality” Act specifically exempts trans people (and only trans people) from its protections.
NZ Civil Unions can be between same-sex or hetro couples (I even know one of the rare hetro couples). You can also change between CU and marriage very easily (if you are hetro).
I cheered when I heard the verdict on the radio. I do hope, though, that that idiocy in the Equality Act is rectified very soon.