(May 20, 2013 at 12:45 pm)Ryantology Wrote: The other major problem is that civil unions are not as equal as they are separate, at least, in the United States. Civil unions do not confer federal-level benefits the way marriage does, so you get state-level benefits only.That's not the case in the UK, since we don't really have the same concept of "states", at least not in England (where the government of England is also the government of the UK).
The main difference between civil partnerships and marriages, and the reason the two are not equal, is that civil partnerships cannot include "religious readings, music or symbols". Originally it was the case that you couldn't hold one in a religious venue, but that was scrapped a few years ago (and unlike what some people would have us think, when civil partnerships were allowed to happen in religious venues, it was at the venue's discretion. No religious body was forced to accept same-sex civil partnership services).
So effectively, the two are not equal. A religious same-sex couple cannot have a religious civil partnership service, nor can they have a religious marriage, even if they want to, and even if they find a religious institution which would happily perform one (and there are many that would).
