François Brutsch emails:
Allow me to disagree with the views expressed in the letters you referred to yesterday. Speaking of partnerships for same sex couples as 'separate but equal' vis-à-vis marriage for straight couples is at best a formalistic approach to equality and at worst a thoughtless slogan.
'Separate but equal' refers to discriminatory regimes by which one social group ensures its domination over another (according to the US Supreme Court when it dealt with segregation). Are gays or lesbians dominated by straight people, as a group or as individuals? Are they discriminated against socially, financially, professionnally? Is the Civil Partnership some new form of pink triangle? Of course not. Rather, it is a way of giving the Pink Pound something for its money, and rightly so.
The only sense of discrimination comes from the unreflective feeling that the same word and institution should be applied to any pair of people, regardless of the unmistakable difference (not inequality) that in one case they are of opposite genders and in the other of the same gender. Of course, it is possible, as in Belgium or the Netherlands, to redesign the laws on marriage in order to erase any notion that they apply specifically to a couple consisting of a woman and a man. That means, for instance, removing the present notion - in this country as in many others - that a marriage is void if it hasn't been physically consummated through the insertion of the man's penis into the woman's vagina (as Baroness Scotland was eager to remind Lord Tebbit, who tried to derail the Civil Partnership Bill by using the equality argument). It can be done, but is it really worthwhile?
The tide may have changed in favour of universal gender-neutral marriage, but I recall in the early 90s when some gays, and especially lesbians, were outraged by any reference to that 'paternalistic' institution. Well, some may think the case for same sex couple unions can be used as a weapon to finish things in that regard, but in my view it is an altogether different question. For the time being equality is very well served by same sex couples having - with the Civil Partnership - the same rights that straight couples have when getting married, without the slightest hint of discrimination.
I've discussed these notions on my blog.Yours, François