The Bisexual Index on relationship recognition

The Bisexual Index has written a very thoughtful piece on the place of bisexuals in same-sex marriage and civil partnership debates, calling for the law to change to recognise both ‘same-sex’ marriage and ‘opposite-sex’ civil partnerships, and exploring the reasons why bisexual people wanting recognition of partners of a different gender to themselves might well opt for civil partnerships over marriage if that was possible.

The post includes comments from OutRage! and Stonewall about the continued invisibility of bisexual people in their policies and activism on these matters, such as the use of terms like ‘gay marriage’ and ‘heterosexual civil partnership’ in OutRage!’s campaign, and Stonewall’s consideration of ‘opposite-sex’ civil partnerships not being within their remit (despite being an LGB organisation).

Quote from The Bisexual Index:

“The way the law is currently written does not mention sexuality, but instead the genders of the people. Why can’t the people campaigning for equality understand that the way to amend the law isn’t to talk about ‘gay vs. straight’ but instead to address the genders – remove the genders from the law and it’s not just gay and straight men and women who’ll have equal love, but all of us.

Equality isn’t saying ‘gay and straight people can marry’, or ‘same-sex and opposite-sex couples can marry’.
Equality is saying ‘people can marry'”

Read the full post here.