Marriage Same Sex Couples Act 2013- Separate not Equal.
The act has afforded Same Sex couples the ability to marry, however discrimination is evident since the rights which accompany this are not equal to those which accompany heterosexual marriage.
The Marriage Same Sex Couples Act 2013, hereafter referred to as the Act 2013, is an important piece of legislation as it signifies the move toward acceptance of different lifestyles and seems to adhere to the separation of church and state. It has enabled persons who are of a homosexual or transgender orientation to elevate their relationship to the status of marriage. The Act 2013 has afforded same sex couples the ability to marry in civil ceremonies, they may be turned away by religious organizations,
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Two of the historically recognized grounds for annulment of marriage, non-consummation and adultery, explicitly do not apply to marriages recognized by the Act 2013. The ‘quadruple lock’ of protections, that is built into the primary legislation, allows for the ‘opt in’ mechanism for religious organizations has made it agreeable that the Church of England and the Church in Wales are explicitly banned from performing same-sex marriages, even if they desire to do so. There are harsher requirements for same-sex marriage with reference to registering premises, especially in regards of shared faith premises, than there are for heterosexual marriage. It is the view of certain activists, such as Peter Tatchell, that inheritance rights for same-sex marriage spouses are unequal to that of heterosexual marriage spouses. The requirements of the spousal permission for a Gender Recognition Certificate, in many authorities opinion, this amounts to a ‘spousal veto.’ The legislation does not repeal the ban on Civil Partnerships not extending to heterosexual couples, in a society which favours cohabiting-love relationships rather marriage, this seems certainly discriminatory. In the United Kingdom the Act 2013 signifies a great stride toward equality, but does not embody it as the previous mentioned factors attribute for the issues of discrimination and inequality. The factors are those which will be examined in this paper to assess the imbalance in the law between same-sex marriages and heterosexual