It’s been surprisingly simple for the English language to begin talking of married couples who are husband and husband, or wife and wife, in recent years. For Britain’s honours system, however, nothing is ever simple. David Furnish, the husband of Sir Elton John, puts things plainly. “I am for 100% equality across the board for everybody, in all walks of life,” he says. “The reality is, if a woman is married to a man with a title, she gets a title. I think everybody should have the same opportunities.”
This is more tangled than it sounds at first. For one thing, there are the hereditary titles, now mostly decorative. These are still generally passed down though the male line, and make no provision for same-sex marriages, which clearly isn’t fair. But then the whole idea of aristocracy isn’t fair, so fixing it might do more harm than good by making this unfairness look legitimate.
Of more concern are the titles that get handed out by merit, such as the “knight bachelor” that Sir Elton earned from a grateful nation for “services to music and charitable services”, or the life peerages given to people in same-sex relationships, such as Lord Alli, Lord Cashman and Baroness Stedman-Scott. These titles, and the power that goes with them, could in theory be granted to anyone, so they should work fairly. In practice, they specifically don’t. When the equal-marriage legislation was drawn up, it carefully excluded peerages and royalty from the change. As a result, somewhat ironically, a man married to a reigning British king is prohibited by statute from being called a queen. Nor would Stedman-Scott’s partner get to be called “Lady”.
The partners of Alli and Cashman would not get anything anyway, since there never have been a special titles for peers’ husbands, gay or straight. As a result, were Furnish married to a titled woman, he would not be any better off. Just as Taylor Hackford has to stay Taylor Hackford, despite being married to Dame Helen Mirren.
The problem here is that we just don’t have a word for the husbands of honoured men and women. We need to think one up. You shouldn’t become a sir or a lord just because of who you married – it implies you earned the title yourself. Something else is needed. Perhaps the best plan would be to extend to these men the right to call themselves “the honourable”, as the younger sons of lords can. There is no basis for doing this whatsoever, but it at least has the virtue of not sounding immediately stupid.
As for Furnish, he’s wisely not getting involved in that part of the debate. “I haven’t thought about what would be an appropriate designation for the husband of a sir,” he said. “I don’t really understand the history of titles and the aristocracy in this country that much anyway.” He’s not the only one.
