http://cvcomment.org/2013/02/06/why-parliaments-vote-leaves-gay-marriage-stranded-up-the-aisle/
But what was clear was that most MPs have an extremely poor idea of what constitutes freedom of religion, which, in speech after speech, the Bill’s proponents equated with freedom of worship, as if the only issue was whether the Church of England would end up being forced into offering same-sex weddings. The question was posed, only to be answered by referring to the Church of England’s briefing to MPs, which accepted this was unlikely. Yet the same MPs ignored that the Church of England (as the Catholic bishops had done earlier) went on to spell out the ways in which a challenge to freedom of conscience and religion was likely — in the case of teachers, registrars, charities, and so on.
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1. Marriages for opposite-sex couples requiring a) vows and b) a supposition of sexual activity & fidelity: hence both non-consummation and adultery invalidate the union. This traditional kind of marriage is reserved, in the absence of a clear definition of same-sex consummation, to heterosexual couples.
2. Marriages for same-sex couples requiring vows but not requiring sexual activity or fidelity (no clauses on consummation or adultery). This de-gendered and de-sexualised union requires no sexual difference and therefore looks only superficially like the first. Because it is only open to same-sex couples, on the other hand, it looks a lot like the remaining two.
3. Marriages for same-sex couples requiring neither vows nor sexual activity/fidelity. In this case, the Bill, following the government’s response to the recent ‘consultation’, envisages that civil-partnered same-sex couples can upgrade their status by filling in a form and paying a fee. In this case, they become legally married, but in a way very different from the first two.
4. Civil Partnerships, distinct from category 3 marriages only in name. Previously a separate category, functionally equivalent but clearly distinct from marriage by virtue of being exclusively available to same-sex couples, civil partnership has now been reduced to a kind of second-class entry-level sub-marriage for those unwilling to ‘upgrade’.
