LONDON: A British couple was turned away in southeast London on November 2 because they were both women. According to the couple, they were told only heterosexual couples were permitted to marry. Ironically, the Greenwich registry offices were flouting a United Kingdom civil partnership law that allows same-sex couples to enter into unions that grant rights identical to those of married male-female couples. Ferguson and Strietzel said they plan to sue the government for violations of the Human Rights Act's rights to marriage, to respect for family life and to protection from discrimination. They will be joined by three other couples who plan to seek marriage licenses and by four heterosexual couples who want to enter into the nation's gay-only civil partnerships. “No matter how good civil partnerships are with regard to the legal protections and rights they provide, they are still a separate system that was put together to stop gay and lesbian people from being able to marry,” said Ferguson. “Like most people in this world, we were brought up to believe that one day we'd fall in love and get married. This is what we want to do and our sexual orientation should not be an impediment.” The challenges to both laws are part of a new activist campaign called Equal Love, which also seeks to open up the civil partnership law to straight couples. “We see the Equal Love campaign as a historic quest for justice – morally equivalent to the campaigns to overturn the bans on interracial marriage in apartheid South Africa and the Deep South of the USA,” said coordinator Peter Tatchell. “The ban on same-sex civil marriage and on opposite-sex civil partnerships is a form of sexual apartheid – one law for gay couples and another law for heterosexual partners. Two wrongs don't make a right.” Same-sex marriage is legal in Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Mexico City, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Washington, D.C. BM
