The first UK-based opposite-sex couple to enter into a civil partnership in the British Isles have called on the government to make the process available to all couples, regardless of sexuality.
Claire Beale and Martin Loat travelled from their home in Ealing, west London, to the Isle of Man – the only place in the British Isles where heterosexual couples can have a civil partnership – where they will have the ceremony on Friday. The couple, who have two children and have lived together since 1992, said they wanted a formal recognition of their relationship but did not want to get married.
Civil partnerships, which were introduced in 2004 for same-sex couples, are not available to heterosexual couples in the UK. But the Isle of Man, which is a crown dependency but not part of the UK, made civil partnerships available to everybody this summer.
Beale and Loat hope the UK government will come to allow heterosexual couples to enter into civil partnerships, or that public pressure will lead to a civil partnership formed in the Isle of Man to become recognised in the UK.
The couple said in a statement: “We respect that other people in committed, lasting relationships might want to opt for marriage. We regard ourselves as one of the millions of ‘happily unmarried’ couples in the UK.
“We want a less encumbered, light-touch civil union that recognises our relationship on our terms, free from the trappings and social pre-conditions of marriage.”
Last week, Adeline Cosson and Kieran Hodgson became the first ever opposite-sex couple in the British Isles to get a civil partnership. As residents of the Isle of the Man, their union will be recognised by their home government, unlike Beale and Loat’s. “The main thing was that we wanted to keep it simple,” Cosson told the Guardian after the ceremony. “We are a young couple. We do want to get married one day, but not now. This gives us rights under the law.”
The Isle of Man ceremonies come less than two weeks before the appeal court in London is due to hear the case of another couple, Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan, who argue that the ban on opposite-sex civil partnerships breaches the Human Rights Act.
The couple lost the first ruling on their case in January, but decided to appeal following a wave of public support, in which 70,000 people signed an online petition asking UK civil partnerships to be open to all.
Both London couples are part of the Equal Civil Partnerships campaign. “We now have 0.1% of British Isles sewn up, only another 99.9% to go!” Loat said.
