Scientologist weddings. Same-sex marriage. The return of the Married Couple's Tax Allowance, although believe that when you see it, for all the good that it would do, anyway. Utah's anti-polygamy law struck down as unconstitutional. Has the world gone stark, staring mad?
Well, when was it ever not? But of that, another time.
Never having needed to be
consummated, civil partnerships ought not to be confined to unrelated same-sex couples, or even to unrelated couples generally.
Furthermore, any marrying couple should be entitled to register their marriage as bound by the law prior to 1969 with regard to grounds and procedures for divorce, and any religious organisation should be enabled to specify that any marriage which it conducted should be so bound, requiring it to counsel couples accordingly.
Statute should specify that the Church of England
and the Church in Wales each be such a body unless, respectively, the
General Synod and the Governing Body specifically resolved the contrary
by a
two-thirds majority in all three Houses.
That would seem like appropriate cold revenge on the dear old C of E for having written the 1969 Act in the first place, anything up to 20 years before it ever reached Parliament, and thus long before most people in society at large would have been in favour of anything remotely resembling it.
(It, the Church of Scotland and the Methodist Church of Great Britain did the same thing on abortion. David Steel says openly that he wrote up their three very similar Reports as a Bill and then duly introduced it. Again, those Reports predated that Bill by a relatively brief, but nevertheless a culturally epoch-distinguishing, period of years. Of course, it took a Conservative Government to legalise abortion up to birth and to establish the legal right of under-16s to abortion without parental knowledge or consent, just as it did to make divorce no-fault, and legally easier than release from a car hire contract.)
That would seem like appropriate cold revenge on the dear old C of E for having written the 1969 Act in the first place, anything up to 20 years before it ever reached Parliament, and thus long before most people in society at large would have been in favour of anything remotely resembling it.
(It, the Church of Scotland and the Methodist Church of Great Britain did the same thing on abortion. David Steel says openly that he wrote up their three very similar Reports as a Bill and then duly introduced it. Again, those Reports predated that Bill by a relatively brief, but nevertheless a culturally epoch-distinguishing, period of years. Of course, it took a Conservative Government to legalise abortion up to birth and to establish the legal right of under-16s to abortion without parental knowledge or consent, just as it did to make divorce no-fault, and legally easier than release from a car hire contract.)
There should be similar provision relating to the Methodist and United Reformed Churches, which also exist pursuant to Acts of Parliament, as well as by amendment to the legislation relating to the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy.
Entitlement upon divorce should be fixed by Statute at one per cent of the other party's estate for each year of marriage, up to fifty per cent, with no entitlement for the petitioning party unless the other party’s fault be proved.
That would be a start, anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment