Why we’re going to the Isle of Man to seal our heterosexual civil partnership

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/21/isle-of-man-heterosexual-civil-partnership

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Barring fog, storms or runway protests at London City airport, this morning we will fly from London to the Isle of Man to become the first heterosexual couple living in the UK to enter into a civil partnership in the British Isles. Unfortunately this option is not open to us in the UK.

The Isle of Man is a crown dependency but not actually in the UK, so can make its own laws. And this new law is one we like. In July, this small island of some 90,000 people, best known for its annual TT motorbike race and snub-tailed cats, zoomed into the lead in the race for social equality.

It matched the UK by legalising marriage for same-sex couples, but also changed its laws to allow different-sex couples to formalise their union in civil partnerships.

Consider that homosexual activity was still illegal in the Isle of Man until the 1990s, and you see how fast has been its path to progressive legislation.

As things stand, our civil partnership will not be recognised on mainland Britain. But it’s a start. Since the introduction of civil partnerships for same-sex couples in the UK in 2004, we’ve been interested in finding an alternative legal grounding to formalise our long relationship. But like many, we were disappointed to discover that couples in our situation were excluded by law. Even when David Cameron’s government brought in same-sex marriage, it didn’t equalise the law to allow different-sex civil partnership; wedded as the then PM was to the pre-eminence of marriage.

This anomaly is being challenged, though. On 2 November a brave and principled couple, Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan, will appear in the court of appeal. Their case is that in insisting that civil partners “must be of the same sex”, the government is in contravention of the Human Rights Act. They are the trailblazers for Equal Civil Partnerships, a movement we support, including its fundraising efforts to mount a proper campaign for a change of law in the UK.

So when the Isle of Man did what the UK has so far failed to do, we jumped at the chance to take advantage of its more progressive legislation. We made our first trip to the island earlier this month to apply in person.

We discovered that if you are UK residents, you are not allowed to just stay on the island the night before your appointment – but hanging around on the island for eight days while the licence is granted is fine. Maybe the island’s tourist office will be offering eight-day “all-inclusive” civil partnership holidays soon.

With two children, a mortgage, and 24 years together, we feel we’ve worked out how to be a ‘happily unmarried' couple

Apart from that, and the hassle of finding a paper-based proof of our address in an age of digital banking, applying was straightforward. Happily the sun shone, the air was fresh and we found the Manx people to be warm and friendly. With stage one complete, we’re now setting out to complete stage two: the official legal undertaking, which involves a simple ceremony and form-signing in the registry in Douglas.

But why not just get married? Why should we? After all, with two children aged over 10, a dog, a mortgage, 24 years of living together and dozens of rows, we feel we’ve pretty much worked out how to be a “happily unmarried” couple, and we don’t see why we need to fall in with an archaic institution to validate our relationship. We aren’t acting on impulse or a whim. Neither is this a “halfway house” to marriage, let alone a way round the UK’s tax laws, which discriminate against us cohabiting unmarrieds.

But we do crave legal recognition, and the family rights and protections afforded to conventionally married couples (of any gender combination). For instance, even now, Martin (as an unmarried father) cannot assume automatic parental responsibility for our older child as the teenager was born before a law-change eradicated this sniffy piece of anti-male bias, discovered with hair-pulling horror after queueing for hours for a replacement passport for the child two years ago. But having nailed our colours to the mast, it would be almost disrespectful to shrug our shoulders and get conventionally hitched for legal and financial reasons.

For us, the concept of “marriage” comes with social and cultural references that just don’t fit how we see ourselves or our partnership. Ironically, on our first visit to the Isle of Man to register our interest in a civil partnership, we were asked whether Claire was going to be “given away” as part of the civil service, as is traditional in many marriage ceremonies: exactly the sort of historical baggage we’re trying to avoid.

Our relationship, after a quarter of a century, is based on love, friendship and true partnership. We respect those people who want to get married. But these marriages don’t all end happily ever after. We’ve seen friends meet, date, marry and divorce in a fraction of the time we have held our relationship together with just love, understanding, country walks, bolshy kids and mortgage payments. We have proved that our form of relationship is as enduring as many a marriage. All we need is legal recognition. The rest we can manage ourselves.