Response to General Synod

Sarah and Rachel respond to the February 2004 General Synod motion that was overwhelmingly passed, stating: 'That this Synod i) strongly reaffirm that marriage is central to the stability and health of society and warrants a unique place in the law of this country; ii) recognise that there are issues of hardship and vulnerability for people whose relationships are not based on marriage which need to be addressed by the creation of new legal right'

The article was originally published in Crucible (July - Sept 2005)

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We started going out in June 2002 and moved in together 15 months later. We were both in our 20s, and neither had lived with a partner before.

The Christian Marriage Model

The Christian marriage model that we were familiar with was of a short engagement followed by a wedding day that marked the very start of a joint life together. Neither living together nor physical intimacy were permitted before the wedding ceremony; at that ceremony your former single life disappeared and your new married existence was born. At first we hoped that our relationship could develop within this structure since it fitted our existing understandings of intimate relationships, made use of a tried and tested model, and gave a context for others to understand the significance of our relationship.

Deciding and preparing

We were living in different parts of the UK when we started going out, and initially considered living nearer to each other rather than moving in together. However it was unclear what would happen next – would we wait at that stage until the law and church decided that we could get married? We felt this would be emotionally unsatisfactory: we loved each other and were ready for a deeper commitment, to make and share our lives together. Being unable to access a legal and religious ceremony to mark the start of a new stage of our relationship made it difficult to follow our ‘Christian model’. The model didn’t fit, just as it doesn’t for many straight couples, and as a result it felt that we were trying to make decisions in a theological vacuum.

We looked for books to give us ideas and markers. Now that most relationships include a period of living together, there are plenty of books of help and advice. These weren’t very useful, they were either concerned with legal rights and protection for common-law, straight couples or gave stereotypical perspectives on how to cope with living with someone of the opposite sex (commitment-phobic men and wedding-dress-obsessed women).

This lack of role models was difficult. Churches seemed to have plenty to say about gay people, either in condemnation or in understanding, but provided few practical and spiritual resources to help us to live out our faith. We asked friends who were married and those who were living together, gay and straight, about their relationships and decisions, and looked to the Bible. Relationships we respected were outward-looking and welcoming and that became a priority for us too.

Rites of passage

On practical and emotional levels, moving in together led to big changes in our lives and marked the start of something new. Although we didn’t plan for any of the rites of passage from our ‘Christian model’, we nevertheless experienced them in ways we didn’t expect.

The night before, Rachel went out for a drink with friends in her old town and they talked about how things would be different now; both in good new ways but also that friendships and priorities would change, and that parts of these friendships would be lost. The evening had become many of the things we understand a hen night to be. Rachel’s parents drove her belongings in a lorry to our new house, and the journey suddenly felt like an act of being given away, especially when Rachel’s mother commented that she would love to come and stay – but that now she would need to check this out with both of us.

Sarah recognised aspects of her relationships with people who had got married that she had not wanted to take on, such as the loss of independence or the marriage relationship taking priority over friendships. But after a few months of living together, she realised that this had happened to some extent, and began to realise why others may have changed in these ways too.

Joint identity

When we moved in together, we began to establish a joint identity in a new place where no-one knew either of us. People we have met have found it difficult to recognise our relationship and also, we feel, to recognise us as adults. No one assumes we are partners, often people think that we are sisters, and even once we explain we are partners we have still told we look like sisters! Alternately, people assume we are house-sharing students, and we feel that many people see us as ‘freaky friends’ (housemates who are a little bit too close). Despite being keen to be ‘out’, we still find such misunderstandings awkward.

Both of us have been invited to ‘girly’ social events where everyone else has left their (male) partners at home. When we have visited new churches our relationship has usually been invisible, even when we have repeatedly told people that we are partners. The only church that appeared to take our relationship seriously condemned us for it. We have recognised that, as everyone, we need emotional support from those outside our relationship, and this has come from (mostly, Christian) friends, and not the institutional church. Coming from similar backgrounds and having supportive families has also made living together easier.

So what does our joint identity mean to us? Probably the same as to other couples that live together: sharing decisions, mealtimes, money, bookshelves, crises; negotiating disagreements about navigating and how to hang up the washing; having a stake in each others’ lives and taking on new friends and family. Building new traditions and preserving or compromising old ones, such as where to spend Christmas.

Marriage

Are there parts of marriage we’d like to claim as our own? Although we started out being unsure what sort of commitment living together would be, very soon we realised that we have embarked on a lifelong commitment. A public ceremony has become something we want to do: to mark a decision that has been made quietly and gradually and also to acknowledge the stake that other people have in our relationship. We worried how people would respond to our using the language of marriage, and cautiously exchanged engagement rings after nearly a year of living together, although it is not possible for us to get married in the UK. We received many engagement cards (all carefully selected to avoid images of a man and woman!) from people who chose to support our decision. A straight friend is passing on tips and resources from her marriage preparation classes, and we have even finally found a helpful book about gay and lesbian marriages.

However, there are symbols and assumptions tied up with marriage that we don’t want to adopt. Questions we are asked such as ‘who does the cooking?’, seem to be trying to establish which of us has the ‘female’ role in the household. Even though there is no man in our relationship, we seem to be expected to explain our behaviour in relation to male and female roles. Marriage still has an in-built hierarchy, as we noticed when our new GP surgery struggled to work out which of us should be the ‘head of the household’ on their records.

Civil partnerships

The Civil Partnership Bill 2004, granting same-sex couples who register the same rights as mixed-sex couples who marry, was fought for hard and is vitally important. The bill didn’t exist when we decided to move in together, so how much of a difference does it make to us now? Legal rights are important, but don’t recognise that we are also bound together spiritually and emotionally. The joy, celebration and all-night queues that greeted the advent of gay marriages in some parts of the US were as much about the public recognition and acceptance that legal rights brought, as about the rights themselves. It also showed that we can’t take legal changes for granted, as later on marriages in some states were revoked by the courts. Those marriages were surely still real for the couples involved, regardless of what the state now said.

We were very excited when the Civil Partnerships Bill was passed, but decided that partnership alone doesn’t express the core of our relationship. We are looking for public vows of love, permanence and fidelity; a ceremony where we can rejoice in our relationship before God, our families and friends; and a celebration. We have decided to go ahead this summer with our wedding, and later in the year will carry out the formalities of becoming Civil Partners once this becomes possible.

It is a welcome move for the church to be considering “issues of hardship and vulnerability for people whose relationships are not based on marriage” but it is not sufficient for these to be solely addressed “by the creation of new legal rights.” We feel the lack of liturgies, social recognition, ethical frameworks around how to live our lives, and rites of passage – at the same time as excitement at exploring these for ourselves.