Support marriage equality

Now is a good time to write to your local county councillors to ask them to support marriage equality.

Here is the letter I have written to my local councillors:

I am writing to ask you to support marriage equality in Oxford County Council.

Thanet has become the first local authority in the UK to endorse the government’s proposals for marriage equality.

Some county councils have not yet made available information on how churches and synagogues that wish to do so can register for religious civil partnerships, and the registration fee is higher than for registering as a marriage venue. Please could you lobby for Oxfordshire County Council to do this.

In addition, I want to see marriage equality in the UK, and would hope that Oxfordshire's county councillors would support this. I want to see religious same-sex marriage made available for those religions and denominations that wish to perform these ceremonies (namely Unitarians, Liberal Judaism, Reform Judaism, Quakers, and the Metropolitan Community Church). Pagans would also like to be able to perform same-sex marriages, but as Pagan opposite-sex weddings have no legal standing in England and Wales, the nature of the obstacle to Pagan same-sex weddings is more complex.

Please also support the option for same-sex civil marriage and opposite-sex civil partnerships. This is important as many same-sex couples would like the opportunity to be married, and many opposite-sex couples would prefer the less traditional option.

This is also important for transgender people, who may be in either a civil partnership or a marriage currently, and in order to register as the opposite sex to the one they are currently labelled as, would have to divorce their partner and get either a civil partnership or a marriage.

The background to this is that Thanet County Council has endorsed the government's plans.

Thanet has become the first local authority in the UK to endorse the government’s proposals for same-sex marriage. Please ask your councillors to pass a motion supporting same-sex civil marriages & opposite-sex civil partnerships. Find out your local councillors & email them via this website: www.writetothem.com

BBC report 

Pink News report 

Please ask councillors to support same-sex marriage for those religions who want to do same-sex marriages too.