Dear friend,

You will probably have heard that this week the Government issued a response to its ‘Equal Civil Marriage’ consultation and announced plans to introduce a Bill to allow same-sex couples to marry.

The Minister for Women and Equalities, Maria Miller MP, described receiving ‘a record’ 228,000 responses to the Government consultation earlier this year. However, we were extremely disappointed that despite previous assurances to do so, the Government had chosen not to include in this total of consultation respondents the 500,000 people who signed the Coalition for Marriage petition by the June deadline. Using this lower figure the Government was able to announce that a majority of respondents (53%) were in favour of redefining marriage while 47% were against. Of the 228,000 responses to the consultation, 132,000 were anonymous submissions through the Home Office’s online response form which could have been made multiple times, by anyone anywhere in the world. Using such an anonymous system casts doubts over the credibility of the consultation results on an issue of such importance.

Mrs Miller described a ‘quadruple lock’ which she said would ‘protect religious organisations’ but we have very real concerns that the proposed safeguards will not be sufficient if cases are brought before the European Court of Human Rights. Recent rulings from Strasbourg have declared that if a member state decides to allow same-sex marriage, but treats homosexual married couples differently from heterosexual married couples, it could be challenged under European human rights law. Legal experts have questioned the strength of the Government’s assurance that with proper drafting ‘the chance of a successful legal challenge through domestic or European courts is negligible’. It is not certain that challenges wouldn’t emerge on the basis of the blanket ban on clergy of the Church of England or whether individual ministers could be prevented from performing same-sex marriages.

The battle to uphold marriage is far from over and is certainly one we can still win. CARE will continue to work hard on your behalf with the Coalition for Marriage to defend the legal definition of marriage as the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. We will keep you updated with future developments in Impact Direct.

Thank you for standing with us,

Nola Leach