When #EqualMarriage was passed into law we waited. And waited. A while ago, it was announced the date was to be Dec 10th. Yay. Finally.
Shelley called Lambeth Town Hall, they said to come in for an appointment, bringing CP certificate and proof of identity – and that we’d prob have to pay £70. We thought this was a bit odd, but figured they just hadn’t quite worked it out yet, and that the news that we DON’T have to pay (for the first year, if you’ve already CP’d, if you’re just transferring a CP into marriage) hadn’t filtered down to them.
This morning we went in, waited a bit longer than we’d expected, and then the nice man took us through to a room where he looked at us quizzically. He asked why we were there. I said “Because we want our Civil Partnership to become a marriage on 10th December”. He looked relieved at this point, as he’d figured we were there hoping to get married and he’d have to let us down. He explained the reason we’d been waiting longer than expected was they STILL have no official notification from government on how this is going to work. He’d taken a while checking with his boss who checked with others. No-one knows yet. He was very kind and very polite as he suggested we come back another time. “Closer to December 10th”.
So. Even where it seems it is ‘fixed’, even where it seems we get equality, even on the most basic level of boring paperwork, no, it’s not fixed, it’s not equal, and ‘they’ (the government) still haven’t told ‘them’ (the registrars) how this is going to work.
Marriage is one of the most basic of human interactions, and we are still waiting for this very ancient concept of marriage (dating back long before monotheism got involved and started telling us how to do it), the union of two people, to be available to us as a couple.
This is yet another point on the vast list of It’s Not Fixed Yet.
And yes, me and my wife marrying, after almost 25 years together, is not a big deal compared to ‘corrective’ rapes and (dis)honour killings and forced marriage and gay-bashing and bullying and all the abuses and humiliations, huge and small, that so many LGBT people suffer daily, everywhere. But it is part of the same continuum and it’s all joined up and therefore NONE OF IT is fixed yet and I am fucking furious that this government gets the kudos of having passed equal marriage into law and STILL makes it difficult (or indeed, technically impossible until registrars know what the paperwork will be) for us to marry just like all the straight couples who have the option to marry – or not – as they will.