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In some countries its popularity has been increasing among heterosexual couples
ON JUNE 27TH Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan emerged triumphant from the British Supreme Court. The judges had ruled that it was discriminatory for British law to deny a heterosexual couple such as them the right to a civil partnership, when same-sex couples have that right. But while Ms Steinfeld and Mr Keidan celebrate, many heterosexual couples in Britain will be wondering what they have been missing out on.
Civil partnerships first appeared in Europe in the late 1980s and 1990s, as a compromise between supporters and opponents of gay marriage. They offered gay couples a legal partnership with most of the rights of marriage, without actually granting them the right to marry. Many gay-rights activists saw this as an unsatisfactory fudge, creating a system that was inherently inferior to marriage, and continued to push for the real thing. In the 2000s, with public opinion in many Western countries continuing to soften, their efforts bore fruit: today, 27 countries allow same-sex marriage.
As they legalised gay marriage, countries that had previously had civil-partnership laws dealt with them in different ways. Some, like Ireland and Sweden, abolished civil partnerships altogether; they saw no need to keep a much-maligned compromise once everyone could get married. But in seven European countries, and some states of America and Australia, civil partnerships are still permitted, even though gay marriage is legal. This includes countries such as Britain and Finland, in which they are only available to same-sex couples, and those like France and the Netherlands, where they are available to heterosexual couples too. The rights enshrined in these partnerships vary from place to place. The British versions are marriage in all but name, as are Dutch “registered partnerships”. In France, though, a civil solidarity pact (PACS) confers only some of the tax benefits and adoption rights of marriage, and can also be annulled far more easily. Remarkably, civil partnerships in some countries have become increasingly popular among heterosexual couples. From 2012 to 2016, the number of heterosexual couples in France choosing to enter into a PACS increased by 20% to 184,000, while the number of marriages fell by 8% to 225,000.
This enthusiasm for civil partnerships might perplex gay-marriage advocates who for a long time regarded them as inadequate. But there are many reasons why a couple might prefer a civil partnership. In places like France, they allow couples to opt for a looser form of commitment either permanently or for a trial period before choosing to marry. Others might prefer civil partnerships for personal or ideological reasons, even when they confer the same rights as marriage. Equal Civil Partnerships, a British advocacy group, suggests that some people “want to avoid the social expectations, pressures and traditions surrounding marriage” in favour of “a more modern form of legal union”. Ms Steinfeld and Mr Keidan took the government to court over civil partnerships because they viewed marriage as sexist and patriarchal. They told the BBC that they associated it with a legacy of treating women as property. Last week’s ruling does not change Britain’s civil partnership law, but calls upon the government to do so. As the government says it will study the judgment, campaigners hope that British heterosexual couples will soon be able to commit to each other without saying “I do.”
Source: https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2018/07/02/what-is-a-civil-partnership
