Legal bid for gay marriage and heterosexual civil partnership
Eight couples will file joint application on 21 December
21 December is the 5th anniversary of civil partnerships in England
Professor Robert Wintemute outlines the legal case for equality
London – 17 December 2010
“Eight British couples will file a joint application to the European Court of Human Rights next Tuesday, 21 December, in a bid to overturn the twin bans on gay civil marriages and heterosexual civil partnerships,” announced human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell of the LGBT human rights group OutRage!.
21 December is the fifth anniversary of the first civil partnership ceremonies in England.
Mr Tatchell is coordinator of the Equal Love campaign – www.equalove.org.uk – which seeks to end sexual orientation discrimination in civil marriage and civil partnership law.
“Over the last two months, four same-sex couples were refused marriage licenses at register offices in Greenwich, Northampton and Petersfield. During the same period, four heterosexual couples were turned away when they applied for civil partnerships in Islington, Camden, Bristol and Aldershot,” added Mr Tatchell.
“All eight received letters of refusal from their register offices, which we are now using as the evidential basis to challenge in the European Court of Human Rights the exclusion of gay couples from civil marriage and the prohibition of straight civil partnerships. Since there is no difference in the rights and responsibilities involved in gay marriages and heterosexual civil partnerships, there is no point or justification in having two mutually exclusive and discriminatory systems.
“Outlawing black marriages would provoke uproar. The prohibition on gay marriages should provoke similar outrage.
“The bans on same-sex civil marriages and opposite-sex civil partnerships are a form of sexual apartheid – one law for gay couples and another law for heterosexual partners. Two wrongs don’t make a right. In a democratic society, we should all be equal before the law,” said Mr Tatchell.
The legal case will be launched at a news conference in the Great Hall of Kings College London at 10am on Tuesday 21 December.
The news conference will be chaired by Peter Tatchell, and feature all eight couples and their legal advisor, Professor Robert Wintemute of the School of Law at Kings College London. He will outline the legal basis of the Equal Love challenge to the current proscriptions.
“Banning same-sex marriage and different-sex civil partnerships violates Articles 8, 12 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights,” said Professor Wintemute.
“It’s discriminatory and obnoxious, like having separate drinking fountains or beaches for different racial groups, even though the water is the same. The only function of the twin bans is to mark lesbian and gay people as socially and legally inferior to heterosexual people.
“I am confident that we have a good chance of persuading the European Court of Human Rights that the UK’s system of segregating couples into two ‘separate but equal’ legal institutions violates the Convention. I would predict that same-sex couples will be granted access to marriage in the UK and that this will be because the UK Government will eventually accept that it cannot defend the current discriminatory system,” he said.
See Prof Wintemute’s detailed legal arguments below.
The news conference will be followed by a discussion chaired by Lord Lester QC and addressed by invited speakers. Both these events are open to the media and public.
See the conference details below.
Professor Robert Wintemute explains the legal basis of the application to the European Court of Human Rights:
1. Why and how we are able to take the Equal Love legal case direct to the European Court of Human Rights, without first exhausting the UK courts
“We have decided to take our case directly to the European Court of Human Rights for two reasons,” said Professor Robert Wintemute.
“First, anyone challenging discriminatory legislation under the Human Rights Act 1998 has to worry that losing could mean being ordered to pay the UK Government’s legal costs. This happened in 2006 to a lesbian couple, Susan Wilkinson and Celia Kitzinger, when they tried to have their lawful Canadian marriage recognised as a marriage in the UK. Our government would only recognise it as a civil partnership. Their case was rejected by a High Court judge, who ordered them to pay the UK Government £25,000 in legal costs. They could not afford to appeal the decision. In contrast, individuals who lose in the European Court of Human Rights do not have to pay the UK Government’s legal costs. The eight couples bringing this joint legal action are not well off and are not in a position to take the risk of a potentially huge legal bill.
“Second, even if we were to win in a UK court, the Human Rights Act 1998 only allows a UK court to make a ‘declaration of incompatibility’, if the court deems legislation to be discriminatory. The Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 states that the parties to a marriage must be male and female. The Civil Partnership Act 2004 stipulates that the parties to a civil partnership must be of the same sex. A ‘declaration of incompatibility’ is not legally binding, so the UK Government is free to ignore it. Even if the declaration is made by the UK Supreme Court, the UK Government is able to say: ‘We’ll wait to hear what the European Court of Human Rights has to say.’ This limit on the powers of UK courts under the Human Rights Act 1998 is a defect in the UK’s legal protection of human rights. Because of this defect, the European Court of Human Rights confirmed in 2008 that a ‘declaration of incompatibility’ is not an effective remedy, and does not have to be exhausted before making an application to the Court against the UK Government.”
2. The key points and arguments of the Equal Love legal case
“Our case is that the combination of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 and the Civil Partnership Act 2004 creates a system that segregates couples into two separate legal institutions, with different names but identical rights and responsibilities. The segregation of couples is based on their sexual orientations: same-sex couples are excluded from marriage, and different-sex couples are excluded from civil partnership. Under Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights, all differences in treatment affecting other Convention rights – in this case the rights to marry in Article 12 and to respect for family life in Article 8 – must have an ‘objective and reasonable justification’. The European Court of Human Rights has said that differences in treatment based on sexual orientation ‘require particularly serious reasons by way of justification’, like differences in treatment based on race, religion or sex. The only apparent reason for maintaining the system of segregation is to use the law to mark same-sex couples as socially and legally inferior, and different-sex couples as socially and legally superior. Same-sex couples are excluded from marriage, which is the universal system for legally recognising a loving, committed, sexual relationship between two adults. This legal segregation is similar to having separate beaches and drinking fountains for white and black people, as existed in South Africa under apartheid. It is comparable to having a system of marriage for Christians and civil partnership for non-Christians.”
3. Why previous ECHR rulings against same-sex marriage might not apply in our case
“On 24 June 2010, the European Court of Human Rights issued its first judgment in a case in which a same-sex couple was seeking the right to marry. The Court found no violation of the European Convention on Human Rights in the case of two men, Horst Schalk and Johan Kopf, who were seeking the right to marry in Austria. Although the Court ruled that Article 12 of the Convention did not yet impose an obligation on European governments to allow same-sex couples to marry, the Court changed its interpretation of Article 12, saying that it ‘would no longer consider that the right to marry enshrined in Article 12 must in all circumstances be limited to marriage between two persons of the opposite sex’. When more Council of Europe countries than the current 7 (out of 47) allow same-sex couples to marry, the Court will be willing to consider ordering all of them to do so. The number European countries that allow same-sex marriage increased from three in 2005 to seven in 2010, and could double again while this case is pending. Same-sex marriage bills are currently being considered by the parliaments in Luxembourg and Slovenia, and a bill is expected soon in Finland. With a change of government, Denmark and France may follow suit.
In our case, we are not asking the Court to order Italy, Poland, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and 35 other Council of Europe member states to allow same-sex couples to marry. Some countries in continental Europe, like Austria, do not want to allow same-sex couples to marry, because they are not ready to allow them to adopt children jointly, or to grant lesbian couples access to donor insemination. But this is not the situation in the UK. In 2002, same-sex couples in England and Wales were granted the right to adopt children jointly. In 2004, they won the right to register a civil partnership and acquire all of the rights of married different-sex couples, except in relation to assisted reproduction. In 2008, they achieved full equality in relation to assisted reproduction, including donor insemination. We are asking the Court to require the UK Government to explain why, after taking these politically difficult decisions voluntarily, and having gone so far to ensure equality between marriage and civil partnerships, the UK should be allowed to withhold access to marriage from same-sex couples, and access to civil partnership from different-sex couples. Given that UK marriages and civil partnerships confer identical rights and responsibilities, the UK government will have to justify to the European Court its maintenance of two different institutions that discriminate based on sexual orientation.
“We will draw on the EU Court of Justice’s requirement of consistency, set out in its Maruko judgment in 2008. The EU Court ruled that it was up to Germany to decide whether or not to have a registered partnership law for same-sex couples, and how many rights to grant registered same-sex partners. But once Germany decided voluntarily to pass a registered partnership law, and to put registered same-sex partners ‘in a situation comparable to that of spouses’, Germany could not exclude them from survivor’s benefits under employment-related pension plans that fell within the scope of EU anti-discrimination law. EU freedom of movement law also requires consistency with regard to the immigration rights of same-sex partners who are not EU citizens, ‘if the legislation of the host Member State treats registered partnerships as equivalent to marriage’.
“Our case is essentially that the European Convention on Human Rights, read in conjunction with developments in European Union law, imposes an obligation of consistency on European governments that voluntarily create an institution like civil partnership, and then grant same-sex civil partners all of the rights of different-sex spouses.
The European Court of Human Rights should, as a matter of consistency and for the avoidance of pettiness, require the UK and other countries in the same position, like Denmark, to take the final step and grant access to the institution of marriage. Anyone who has attended a civil partnership ceremony, and seen how similar it is to a marriage ceremony, knows how extraordinarily petty it is for the UK Government to say that a same-sex couple can have all the rights and responsibilities of marriage through an institution with a different name (civil partnership) but cannot have access to the word and institution of marriage.
4. Our assessment of the chances of success
“I am confident that we have a good chance of persuading the European Court of Human Rights that the UK’s system of segregating couples into two ‘separate but equal’ legal institutions violates the Convention. I would predict that same-sex couples will be granted access to marriage in the UK and that this will be because the UK Government will eventually accept that they cannot defend the current discriminatory system. The UK Government should settle the case, and voluntarily introduce a bill in the UK Parliament, so that the European Court of Human Rights does not have to issue a judgment. This bill should simply repeal the twin bans on same-sex marriage and different-sex civil partnership, and give every couple, different-sex or same-sex, a choice of marriage or civil partnership, as in the Netherlands, Quebec and South Africa. This bill would bring ‘Equal Love’ to the UK,” said Professor Wintemute.
More information:
http://www.twitter.com/EqualLoveUK
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Equal-Love/163531170333628?v=wall&ref=ts
Equal Love news conference
Legal action for gay marriage launched
On the fifth anniversary of civil partnerships in England
Bid to overturn ban on straight civil partnerships too
Tuesday, 21 December 2010, 10am to 1pm
News conference and debate – Chaired by Lord Lester QC
The Great Hall, King’s College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS
See the location here:
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/campuslife/campuses/strand/strandcampuslocation.aspx
21 December is the fifth anniversary of the first civil partnership ceremonies in England and Wales.
“This event will celebrate five years of civil partnerships, hear Lord Lester and other speakers discuss the case for ending the legal segregation of couples based on their sexual orientation, and launch the joint legal action by the eight couples who are seeking to overturn the twin bans on same-sex marriages and different-sex civil partnerships,” said Professor. Robert Wintemute, Professor of Human Rights Law at the School of Law, King’s College London.
Professor Wintemute is drafting the legal case and will formally announce and launch it on 21 December.
“Our Equal Love campaign wants both marriages and civil partnerships opened up to all couples, different-sex and same-sex. Let everyone have a free and equal choice,” he added.
“At this event we will announce the joint legal action to be taken by the eight Equal Love couples. Four same-sex couples have filed applications at register offices for civil marriages. Four different-sex couples have applied for civil partnerships. All have been refused, on the grounds that the law prohibits same-sex civil marriages and different-sex civil partnerships. It is this discrimination that we intend to challenge in the courts,” said Professor Wintemute.
10:00 to 11:00 am – Equal Love campaign news conference
The case for equality in civil marriage and civil partnership law
Peter Tatchell, human rights defender, co-founder of OutRage! and co-ordinator of the Equal Love campaign: www.equallove.org.uk
Robert Wintemute, Professor of Human Rights Law, King’s College London
Sharon Ferguson, Chief Executive Officer, Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, and her partner Franka, on behalf of the four same-sex couples
Katherine Doyle and Thomas Freeman, on behalf of the four different-sex couples
10:30 to 10:45 am – Questions from the media
10:45 to 11:00 am – Coffee break
11:00 am to 1:00 pm – Equal Love campaign debate
How should the Government respond to the Equal Love campaign?
Chair: Lord Anthony Lester of Herne Hill QC, author of the private member’s bill that inspired the Civil Partnership Act 2004
Introductory remarks: Lord Lester
Speaker from the UK Government: no minister or civil servant available
Speaker from the Labour Party: no Labour spokesperson available
Prof. Anne Barlow, Professor of Family Law and Policy, University of Exeter
The Rev. Carla Grosch-Miller, Minister, St. Columba’s United Reformed Church, Oxford
Canon Giles Goddard, Priest in charge, St. John’s Church (Church of England), Waterloo, London
Background information
Segregation of couples in UK law, based on sexual orientation:
Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, s. 11: “A marriage … shall be void [if] … the parties are not respectively male and female …”
Civil Partnership Act 2004, s. 3(1): “Two people are not eligible to register as civil partners … if they are not of the same sex …”
Countries, provinces and states with marriage for same-sex and different-sex couples:
17 – Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Iceland, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, USA (Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, District of Columbia), Mexico (Federal District)
Countries, provinces and states with civil partnership for same-sex and different-sex couples:
10 – Australia (Australian Capital Territory, Tasmania, Victoria), Canada (Québec), Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, USA (Illinois, Nevada, District of Columbia)
Countries, provinces and states with both marriages and civil partnerships open to gay and heterosexual couples ie. “Equal Love”:
3 – Canada (Québec), Netherlands, South Africa
More information:
http://www.twitter.com/EqualLoveUK
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Equal-Love/163531170333628?v=wall&ref=ts