Dear friend, you're my fall-back plan! (From Gazette & Herald)

Dear friend, you're my fall-back plan!

HANNAH GIBBONS is delighted to welcome the new law on civil partnership - especially as it means she will never end up as an old-aged spinster...

I'VE recently been on holiday in sunnier parts and made a great many friends (as we inevitably do, thanks to my dad's insatiable sociability) who included a honeymooning couple of a quite different type. The groom was called Dave and was a dapper young fellow. The blushing bride: a six-foot rugby player, who went by the name of Simon and had a five o'clock shadow. They were celebrating their civil partnership which, I'm told, was barely distinguishable from a marriage ceremony, were very much in love and delighted to be husband and husband.

And using all the common sense I could muster, I could not think of one reason why everybody shouldn't be delighted, or at least accepting of them. People's religious and moral qualms have always been aimed in the direction of homosexuality - somewhat dogmatically and archaically, if you ask me. However, whether it's morally right or not shouldn't really matter in the case of marriage. Other people's moral gripes shouldn't affect the way people are treated in the eyes of the state, and that treatment ought to be just. The Church can refuse to conduct the services, and that's down to them, but the state is secular and must give everyone the same civil rights, regardless of gender. I simply cannot understand what problem anyone could raise to that - two people in love, declaring their commitment to each other. It's fairly straightforward, inconsequential to Joe Public, and probably has a one in three chance of ending in divorce - what's so wrong about that?

So far, so in-keeping with traditional male and female marriage. And I'm sure our holiday friends had a honeymoon similar to normal marriage partners - they didn't drink neon blue cocktails and not once did I see them go skipping along the beach at sunset (although if they had, I may have offered to join them).

And not only do I have no objection to the civil partnership, I actually embrace it for the new dimension it adds to a night out with my best friend - now there's a distinct possibility that we'll accidentally get married! Were we to stumble into a Vegas style registry office, who knows what might happen... That risqu possibility makes the traditional midnight traffic cone snatch look like mere child's play (of course, I know it's actually a very mature and grown-up thing to do).

If I needed any more convincing of the benefits of the civil partnership, my dear friend has assured me that we have no chance of ending up as old spinsters, because if we're not both married by the time we're 40, we can be each other's fall-back plan! With all this going for just once tiny change in legislation, honestly, who could object to such an all-encompassing law?

Updated: 15:55 Wednesday, January 18, 2006