'Marriage' in a modern age

Today marks the 25th anniversary of my parents' marriage. In 1987 a church ceremony and a marquee reception with all the trimmings was considered fairly commonplace, indeed, it would have been frowned upon had my parents not been married in a church regardless of their far from devout Christian beliefs. Yet my parents are still happy after 25 years together - they still love each other, and would no doubt feel the same had they been married in a civil ceremony, or indeed never been married at all; the fact that their legal union was religious makes no difference to the way they feel about one another. Thus, it fills me with sadness when I see marriage privileged as an institution to protect the 'traditional family', whatever that may be. This view was heralded yesterday by the Church of England in its denunciation of government proposals to extend the word 'marriage' to same sex couples who choose to legally commit to one another. Such a move arguably strips marriage of its privilege over civil partnerships by recognising that 'marriage' is about much more than consummation, procreation and raising a family, as has been traditionally held in both public opinion and in the law (Wilkinson v. Kitzinger). Indeed, it makes an important statement about the nature of marriage as a commitment between two people regardless of their sex or motive for legal union, and so begins to consider the diverse relationships of intimacy that should be protected by law.

However, I wonder whether such proposals go far enough to generate equality and truly combat homophobia in modern society. While the Civil Partnership Act 2004 gave the same legal rights to same sex couples as it already gave to heterosexual couples, simply changing the law cannot dissolve people's social prejudices. Only education can do this, and even then achieving a complete abandonment of heteronormative views of marriage cannot be guaranteed. What is required is therefore not to simply assimilate civil partnerships into the concept of marriage by transferring the word 'marriage' to them, but to change the view of what marriage represents from the inside; what legal protection should be awarded for. Indeed, many same sex couples may not want to be 'married', but just wish to have their relationship recognised and accepted as being real and equal to any heterosexual relationship. The government has tried to reflect this by retaining civil partnerships for those who do not want same sex marriages, but again, this does little to address the problem that the roots of prejudice are not grounded in the labels we attach to things - the labels are merely a formal expression of that prejudice, and so simply adding more and more labels into the mix will achieve very little, and perhaps even increase discrimination.

Therefore, it is only by changing our definitions of 'marriage' and 'family' from the inside, where prejudice is born, that we may see prejudice and discrimination against same sex couples diminish, and hopefully disappear altogether.