For those who continue to call same-sex marriage “marriage equality,” you might be interested to know that the UK government doesn’t consider your sexual activity equal.
So when same-sex marriage came into law, it didn’t automatically spell marriage equality – it’s one of the reasons why THEGAYUK.com doesn’t use the term.
One of those things that stopped us from fully embracing the marriage equality slogan was that in UK law gay sex and straight sex are not equal.
How do we know this? Well, straight couples can get divorced because of adultery. Gay couples cannot. Effectively treating same-sex sexual relations differently from heterosexual sexual relations.
Adultery is defined by UK law “voluntary sexual relations between an individual who is married and someone who is not the individual’s spouse”, but it only counts if the person is of the opposite sex. A spouse cannot commit adultery if the person they are cheating with is the same sex.
Grounds for divorce, in this case, would have to be petitioned under “unreasonable behaviour”.
This is also true of civil partnerships. Speaking to THEGAYUK.com last year, Andrew Smith, Associate Solicitor for Blacks Solicitors’ Family Law team told us,
“…the definition of adultery is sexual intercourse with someone of the opposite sex outside marriage. Instead, civil partners have to use ‘unfaithfulness’ as one of a number of examples of Unreasonable Behaviour.”
“Where is the equality?”
Jodene Murphy is petitioning the UK government for change. Writing on the petition Murphy explains, “When the UK Government welcomed same-sex marriage and updated the Marriage Act accordingly, they neglected to sufficiently update the divorce law. We are now living in a country where same-sex couples cannot divorce under the grounds of adultery. Where is the equality? Equal rights for all.”
The petition needs to garner over 10,000 signatures in order for the government to answer. At 100,000 signatures, the petition will be considered for debate in Parliament.
This is an advantage for same-sex couples. Do we really want a list of specific sexual acts that count as adultery? Would it have to be anal? We can get exactly what we want via the law as it stands, so there is no point in defining specific gay acts to count as adultery. That’s the grown-up way.
Jodene Murphy’s demand is a sort of mirror image of those tiresome straight couples who say there’s no equality because they can’t have a civil partnership–a category of legal relationship invented to stigmatise same-sex couples as people who would taint marriage.