Responding to the CofE response

The Church of England has submitted its response to the government consultation on the future of Civil Partnership, (which closes on Friday), and this post is my response to that. I have to be clear that I am writing this full of the anger and pain of my initial reading, rather than waiting to calm down.

Before I get into dealing with content of the response which represents the Archbishops Council and House of Bishops I want to clarify my own situation, which is more fully detailed in this post I wrote responding to the House of Bishops Pastoral Response to Same Sex Marriage. I am a cis gendered person who is in a civil partnership with a transitioning male. In order for him to get his Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) we will need to transfer our civil partnership to a marriage. If civil partnerships are revisited it may provide us with the opportunity to stay in our civil partnership thus allowing me to retain my identity. If it is not altered we will have to transfer to a marriage before the GRC is granted (whilst my partner still has the same sex birth certificate). The other choice we have is to dissolve our  relationship totally before the GRC is granted and then get married afterwards losing a range of legal rights. We would like to retain our civil partnership but are not allowed to. Married couples where one is trans are no longer required to transfer their marital status in this way for a GRC to be granted.

I am not a Church of England adherent, rather I am a member of the Methodist Church. However, I am living in an ecumenical area and the denomination is on a journey of working more closely with the Church of England.

The response is calling for retention of Civil Partnerships but asks for them not to be made open to opposite sex couples. It also explicitly refers to people in the situation myself and my husband are in but without apparent understanding of the GRC process and the order in which things work.

With regard to the importance of keeping civil partnerships it makes an argument based upon the view that marriage and civil partnerships are inherently different. It also says "If civil partnership was to be abolished, such couples would be faced with the unjust  choice of either marrying (which might conflict with their religious beliefs about the nature of  marriage) or losing all public and legal recognition of their relationship." What this last sentence fails to mention is that based on the most recent Church of England guidance clergy from that denomination who are in civil partnerships would face the choice between losing the public and legal recognition or losing their jobs. Thus, the retention of civil partnerships is vital if the Church of England is to maintain its current position.

The next part of the response asks that new civil partnerships also continue to be granted. This part of the response is focused around having respect for those who have beliefs about the nature of marriage being between a man and a woman being respected.

With regard to civil partnerships being opened up to opposite sex couples the opposition given relates to their argument that the need for civil partnerships comes from marriage being distinctly different from other forms of partnership and being specifically between a man and a woman.

With regards to the potential costs of getting rid of civil partnerships the issues relating specifically to Church of England clergy are not mentioned.

Then comes the part of the response which refers to the situation of couples such as me and my husband. I am going to copy this in full so people are clear on what is said before I unpack it.

"Paragraph 3.19 notes the question of couples in a civil partnership where one member undertakes gender reassignment. They would currently have to dissolve their civil partnership and then marry. We agree that it should be made as straightforward as possible for such couples to translate their civil partnership into a marriage, just as same sex couples currently in civil partnerships will be able to make the transition into marriage once the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act is implemented. Such a couple would have made the transition from being, in law, a same sex couple to being an opposite sex couple, and we see no reason why the category of civil partnership should be  extended to opposite sex couples who currently have the option of marriage. However, we believe that, because the relationship remains one between the same two individuals, and where their bonds of affection and commitment are untouched by the gender reassignment of one party, the transition to marriage should be made in such a way as to emphasise the continuity of the relationship."

The current legislation in fact allows for us to transfer our relationship to marriage and then to remain married. The situation will be that it will be regarded as a "same sex" marriage by those who seek to make a distinction on the basis of a gender from the point at which is transferred to the point at which the GRC is granted. It would only be dissolved if we sought to avoid falling for a short while into that category which the church will not recognise as legitimate. The writers of this response have gotten hold of part of the issues involved but not the full picture. In seeking to respond sensitively and compassionately they have created another contradictory mess.

They give no idea of what alternative transitional arrangements should be and or when they should be made. One can only assume they are advocating the idea that when a GRC is granted that is the point that a switch in relationship status should occur. This would require a significant amendment to both the Same Sex Marriage Act and the Gender Recognition Act, although to be honest if I have to transfer I would prefer it to take this form. 

I find what they are saying regarding the "transition from being, in law, a same sex couple to being an opposite sex couple" and not seeing any "reason why the category of civil partnership should be extended to opposite sex couples" interesting. The central thrust of their arguments for keeping civil partnerships and the difference between marriage and other forms of relationship seems to be based around biological understandings of what it means to be male and female and around understandings of sexual behaviour in same sex and opposite sex relationships. In the case of female to male transition a significant number of people choose not to have phalloplasty  (genital surgery) due to the level of risk involved. Thus in such relationships the sexual behaviour is exactly the same as between lesbians, whom they won't allow marriage to.

There is a clear recognition of the correct gender status of the trans person in this statement, but if this understanding is followed through it invalidates many of their previous arguments against marriage being legitimately between people of a same sex. This part of their response appears to be a position of convenience rather than a well thought out response. It seems to me that the CofE are wanting to have it both ways. They clearly want to hold on to the position already stated that they feel same sex couples should be in a civil partnership rather than marriage and that civil partnerships should not be open to opposite sex couples. However, gender is not as clearly defined as they would seek to claim it is and the existence of trans couples such as ourselves gives a real problem to the arguments they are making.

The problem with the law and this response to the consultation is it seeks to work on binary categories and understandings of gender and relationships which we are increasingly seeing as inadequate. Couples such as myself and my partner in many ways go beyond the existing categories or the traditional understandings they are based upon.

An additional note is that by using the binaries and seeking to promote categories of relationship based upon them the CofE is totally ignoring the reality of gender queer people whose gender identity goes beyond being male or female.  

In terms of a Methodist response to the Civil Partnership consultation it doesn't seem one has been published, which makes sense as the report from the same sex marriage consultation is not available yet.