Same-Sex Marriage
Same-sex Marriage
Proposing change
Same-sex marriages are now celebrated all over the UK. They are a core part of the UK’s culture, communities and institutions. Passing legislation to introduce same-sex marriage was a landmark moment – for many couples personally, but also for the wider lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans plus (LGBT+) community.
It marked an important step in addressing the UK’s past legal discrimination against same-sex couples, building on the achievements of a long history of campaigners who worked to expand LGBT+ rights. This case study looks at how the government passed the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013.
It examines the policy’s journey, from a campaign aim of LGBT+ rights groups to a contested issue in the 2010 general election, to official government policy, and finally to
legislation that introduced same-sex marriage rights in England and Wales, while accommodating many of the concerns of those who remained opposed.
It draws on a policy reunion at the Institute for Government held in March 2023, which brought together officials, ministers, LGBT+ rights campaigners and representatives from religious organisations to discuss what made the policy making process for same-sex marriage a success, and what lessons the government can learn from it to inform future policy making. It also draws on interviews and a literature review. It finds that the key factors in success were:
• the role of long-running cultural change, campaigns from LGBT+ rights groups, the introduction of civil partnerships and political support from the Liberal Democrats in creating the conditions for same-sex marriage to be a high-profile, serious policy option
the political risks that senior Conservatives – led by David Cameron – took to adopt same-sex marriage as government policy at a time when neither the majority of the public nor many Conservative voters supported it
the engagement processes the government used to ensure it introduced same-sex marriage while understanding and responding to the concerns of those groups who were opposed to it
cross-government co-ordination to design and deliver same-sex marriage legislation, including working effectively with departments where it was a low priority
keeping the bill tightly focused on its priority to manage the scope of parliamentary debate and minimise delays
The work of government to deal with discrimination against the UK’s LGBT+ population remains ongoing, particularly with rising hate crime in recent years. The government is also responding to calls to change legislation covering conversion therapy and gender recognition.
This case study reflects on lessons the government could learn from how the 2010 coalition government approached the reform of marriage legislation, when deciding how to respond to these challenges
Restrictions on LGBT+ rights in the UK have a long history. Sex between men was criminalised in state courts from 1533,* and was not treated as equal in law to sex .
between men and women until 2003 in England and Wales, 2008 in Northern Ireland and 2013 in Scotland.
The latter half of the 20th century saw slow and hard-won changes to laws restricting LGBT+ rights, fought for by a growing community of campaigners, including parliamentarians and external pressure groups like Stonewall (founded in 1989 in response to Section 28 legislation, which prohibited local authorities from “promoting homosexuality”) and Outrage! (a radical non-violent direct-action group set up in 1990).
Throughout this time, same-sex couples were excluded from marrying. It was in effect prohibited, ** and in 1971 the government formally banned it in the Nullity of Marriage Act.4 In 1992, Outrage! held the first activist challenge to this ban.
Five lesbian and gay couples filed applications for marriage licences, which were refused. Peter Tatchell, one of the founding members of the group, called this the “opening shot in the long campaign for equal marriage”.
This matched similar calls for same-sex marriage in the US, including conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan’s landmark 1989 essay advocating for same-sex marriage as “conservative in the best sense of the word”.
As LGBT+ rights were extended, there were growing calls for complete equality between same-sex and opposite-sex couples. In 2005, Tony Blair’s government introduced civil partnerships – a major step in remedying the legal inequalities
Introducing same-sex marriage becomes official government policy
In 2010, the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government was formed. Same-sex marriage appeared absent from the coalition negotiations and was not mentioned in the Programme for Government that David Cameron and Nick Clegg agreed.
Instead, the government committed to removing historical convictions for consensual gay sex from public records and building support for civil partnerships abroad (a remaining disparity with marriages, which are recognised internationally).
Internally, however, the question of introducing same-sex marriage had not faded away. Lynne Featherstone was made minister for equalities in May 2010, working under Theresa May in the Home Office.
At the start of her new role, she attended a briefing session at the Institute for Government where Michael Heseltine advised new ministers to pick one or two things to “relentlessly drive forward” – she decided hers should be same-sex marriage.
Featherstone – supported by Nick Clegg – managed to secure a vote on equal marriage at the September 2010 Liberal Democrat party conference. The vote passed, and equal marriage became official Liberal Democrat party policy.
A month later Ed Miliband, also a proponent of same-sex marriage, was voted leader of the Labour Party. Campaigners were keeping the debate in the public eye and continuing pressure on government for a change of stance.
Peter Tatchell set up the Equal Love campaign, bringing a joint legal action in the UK courts and ultimately in the European Court of Human Rights to challenge the twin bans on same-sex marriages and opposite-sex civil partnerships. While the cases were ultimately ruled inadmissible, they attracted sustained media interest.
At the same time, some attitudes within the Conservative Party were beginning to change. Increasingly, some Conservative politicians applied their support for stable, committed, loving relationships and families – historically reserved for opposite-sex couples – to same-sex relationships too.
For this reason, shortly after starting her new role as home secretary, Theresa May said she regretted her voting record on gay adoption, telling a BBC Question Time audience that she now supported “a stable, family environment – be that a heterosexual couple or a gay couple”.
She agreed to support Lynne Featherstone’s efforts to make same-sex marriage government policy, and she proposed the policy to the prime minister and cabinet to seek collective agreement.
Tatchell and other campaigners began to draw together a block of senior Conservative MPs supporting same-sex marriage, starting with London mayor Boris Johnson, who asked “why not?” when asked about it at the 2010 London Pride.38 Other Conservative MPs who supported the policy soon after included Margot James, Chloe Smith and Mike Weatherley.
The Goverment
David Cameron, the prime minister, was in a thorny position. Same-sex marriage was far from a priority when he had planned the Conservative election manifesto and negotiated the coalition’s Programme for Government, and most Conservative voters were against it.
Supporting same-sex marriage would risk losing the support of MPs and party members, while opposing it risked leaving the Conservatives politically isolated, and fuelling attacks branding them outdated and “the nasty party”.
Given that Cameron’s coalition partner supported same-sex marriage, responsibility for failing to adopt it would sit squarely with the Conservatives. Personally, he was also unsure where he stood, admitting in his memoir that it was something he did “worry and even wobble over”.
Over time, with “a few people to convince” him, Cameron’s perspective solidified and he decided to take the first steps to introduce same-sex marriage. He credits conversations with his wife Samantha, who brought him round to the view that the institution of marriage and its symbolic meaning (as distinct from civil partnerships) should be available to everyone.
He also notes the influence of key people around him – “George [Osborne], Kate [Fall], Danny [Finkelstein], Nick Boles, and Michael Salter” – who encouraged him to make reform a political priority and see it as part of his project of modernising the Conservative Party.
As a result, when Theresa May’s proposal to introduce same-sex marriage did not reach collective agreement – at least two cabinet ministers opposed it – Cameron decided to overrule them.
In September 2011, Lynne Featherstone announced that the government would launch a consultation on how to implement equal civil marriage. Cameron famously confirmed his support at the 2011 Conservative Party conference a month later, saying: “I don’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I am a Conservative.”
(Notably, Cameron disagreed with the idea of opposite-sex civil partnerships, which was ruled out despite being a Liberal Democrat policy aim.)
Consultation The government knew that introducing same-sex marriage would be controversial. It was keen to understand where the public were on the policy and, where possible, take their views into account in its design.
Consequently, the government ran a 13-week public consultation from March 2012. It worked up proposals for how the new legislation would work. Alongside setting out its implications for marriage and civil partnership rights, the Government Equalities Office (GEO) set up a cross-government working group to determine proposals for how the legislation would affect related issues: the conditions for dissolution, divorce and annulment, recognising overseas same-sex marriages, spousal pension entitlements, and the implications for free speech and education.
The consultation asked the public to respond to these proposals, asking:
- whether civil marriage should be available to same-sex couples or not, and why the respondent felt so
- whether LGBT+ respondents would wish to have a civil marriage ceremony themselves, and if they would personally prefer a civil partnership or a marriage
- whether religious marriage ceremonies should be available to same-sex couples
- whether the government should keep civil partnerships as an option for same-sex couples when it introduced civil marriage
- whether the government should open up civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples
- whether respondents in a civil partnership would wish to convert it into a marriage, and whether there should be a civil ceremony available for this occasion whether married trans respondents would like to use this policy to remain in their marriage while obtaining a full gender recognition certificate (previously, they needed to divorce to obtain this)
- whether they had any comments on the government’s proposals to manage related issues. Throughout the period during which the government was designing, conducting and responding to the consultation, ministers and senior officials met with key stakeholders – both those supporting and those opposing the policy – to hear their views.
Through civil partnerships, same-sex couples could be formally recognised by the state and could now access very similar legal rights to opposite-sex married couples (including tax, pensions, tenancy, parental responsibility, life insurance and next-ofkin rights).
It also made an important cultural statement that same-sex relationships were a valuable and celebrated part of UK society and gave couples opportunities to organise formal ceremonies to celebrate their relationships.8 Many in the LGBT+ community welcomed civil partnerships. But some felt they created a two-tier system; there were still some differences in rights (such as pension rights if one partner died),9 and some felt that civil partnerships could not match the symbolic significance of marriage.
As Susan Wilkinson put it in her application to the European Court of Human Rights to have her marriage recognised in the UK (explored below): I want to be able to refer to Celia as my wife and have that immediately and unproblematically understood as meaning that she is my life-partner…
I want our marriage to be recognised institutionally by banks, insurance companies, the tax office, and so on… To have our relationship denied that symbolic status devalues it relative to the relationships of heterosexual couples.10 Civil partnerships were initially only available to same-sex couples. This too had opposition, as some opposite-sex couples preferred them, viewing marriage as an outdated institution.
For some campaigners, including Outrage, true equality meant all couples having the right to marry or enter a civil partnership. After civil partnerships were introduced, the push for equal marriage continued. Aiming to emulate the success of previous legal challenges, * campaigners began taking same-sex marriage cases to the European Court of Human Rights.
In 2006, Susan Wilkinson and Celia Kitzinger applied to have their marriage – registered legally in Canada – recognised in the UK, arguing that treating this as a civil partnership breached their human rights. The judge found against them. He agreed there had been discrimination but found it justified, on the grounds that civil partnerships are legally
comparable to marriage, and that maintaining the separate status of marriage for opposite-sex couples would protect “the traditional family”.
From 2008, debates in the US – amplified through emerging social media networks – began to shape perspectives towards same-sex marriage in the UK LGBT+ community.
After a state Supreme Court ruling in May 2008, California became the second US state to allow same-sex marriage (still without federal marriage benefits, which the Défense of Marriage Act 1996 confined to opposite-sex couples).
But just six months later, Californian voters approved Proposition 8, adding a clause to the state constitution that banned same-sex marriage. Anger – at both the decision and
the homophobia the debate stoked – was felt across LGBT+ communities, and generated increasing demand for equal marriage in the UK.
By 2010, Pink News found that over 90% of its readership supported same-sex marriage, along with almost every LGBT+ rights organisation and political group. The exception was Stonewall, which initially did not prioritise supporting same-sex marriage on the grounds that civil partnerships already gave almost equal legal rights to marriage.
It changed its position in October 2010 after pressure from the LGBT+ community, including several of its own founders Attitudes in the wider public were also beginning to shift. The proportion of adults believing that a same-sex relationship is “not wrong at all” increased gradually from 17% in 1983 to 39% in 2007, reaching 45% by the 2010 general election.2
Nat Cen’s analysis of the 2023 British Social Attitudes survey attributes this partially to demographic trends, with each younger generation becoming more supportive. But, in contrast to trends in other issues like pre-marital sex, it also finds broader societal changes in attitudes.
Support for same-sex relationships declined in the 1980s in the peak of the HIV/Aids crisis and the subsequent Section 28 legislation, and increased from the 1990s when laws restricting LGBT+ rights were revoked and there was more positive visibility of same-sex relationships, including large Pride events and popular public figures like Ellen DeGeneres, Sandi Toksvig and Will Young coming out as gay.
There was still strong opposition to same-sex marriage within many religious groups. But some groups – the Quakers, Liberal Jews and Unitarians – were supportive and welcomed same-sex relationships as part of their faith.
From March 2010, after an amendment to the Equality Act introduced by Lord Waheed Alli, they exercised a new right to choose to conduct religious civil partnership ceremonies.
These supportive religious groups also called for the right to conduct religious same-sex marriage ceremonies, paving the way for others like the Reform Jews, United Reformed Church, Baptists and Methodists who would later come to support same-sex marriage. In the run-up to the 2010 general election, pressure for the main parties to develop and justify their official policy on same-sex marriage increased.
Campaigners made equal marriage into a higher-profile issue, moving discussions beyond issues like tackling hate crime and homophobic bullying, around which the political debate had up to that point more comfortably coalesced.
Increasingly, campaigners and commentators questioned party leaders about their stance. Nick Clegg had advertised his support for same-sex marriage from July 2009 but did not make it a Liberal Democrat manifesto promise.
Gordon Brown continued his government’s policy of opposing it, on the grounds that marriage was “intimately bound up with questions of religious freedom” (later, in 2013, he would write that his position had changed and he now supported the legislation).
After protests and declining LGBT+ Conservative support, fuelled by several high-profile homophobic comments from Conservative MPs shortly before the general election,28 David Cameron promised to “consider the case for gay marriage” – a lukewarm commitment but a sign the debate was beginning to gain ground
Reunion
Reunion participants noted that campaigners were concerned that No.10 “had received a big pile of letters opposing it, and [a] very small pile of letters in favour”, and aware that LGBT+ grassroots’ attention had partially moved on to other issues now the government had announced it would introduce civil same-sex marriages.
In response, Benjamin Cohen (Pink News) and Mike Buonaiuto (Coalition for Equal Marriage) launched the Out4Marriage campaign. They published a series of YouTube videos featuring public figures explaining why they supported same-sex marriage, from celebrities like Hugh Grant to politicians like Yvette Cooper and Theresa May. The series reached a large audience and is widely credited with increasing popular support for the policy.
The consultation closed in June 2012. It had 228,000 responses (excluding petitions) – at that point the most ever received by a government consultation. The government took six months to process the results and respond. Policy reunion participants told us that this had been planned strategically.
Anticipating a high response rate, officials had worked with analysts and lawyers to design the consultation questions with a plan for categorising and analysing responses in mind. After the consultation closed, they contracted additional staff to process responses quickly according to this pre-planned system.
A response would be labelled initially according to whether it supported or opposed the policy, then would be further categorised by the reasons given. This ensured each response was read and considered, but the government could produce a useful overall summary of the public position relatively quickly, crucial for making the subsequent policy decisions.
Civil same-sex marriage Just over half of the responses supported civil marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples. There was opposition from some religious groups, mostly on the grounds that their religion defined marriage as between a man and a woman.
Many felt that allowing same-sex couples to marry would have a negative impact on the institution of marriage and have wider negative consequences for society. While the government had already committed to introducing same-sex civil marriages, reunion participants told us that ministers had actively decided that it was important to properly understand the concerns of those who disagreed with the policy.
The government had to decide how best to respond to these. Religious same-sex marriage While the petitions submitted were overwhelmingly against religious same-sex marriages, most people responding to the consultation thought that the legislation should permit religious marriages for same-sex couples.
Some religious groups – the Quakers, Liberal Jews and Unitarians – wanted to perform these ceremonies in line with their beliefs. This created a complex implementation dilemma. The government’s initial strategy had been to introduce solely civil same-sex marriage ceremonies.
Reunion participants confirmed this had allowed a tentative detente; once religious leaders “realised they couldn’t stop it happening, they aligned around it being OK as long as they didn’t have religious marriage”.
But this strategy was no longer viable. If implemented, it might open the government up to challenge on the grounds that the Act did not account for the religious freedom rights of those who wanted to perform religious same-sex marriage ceremonies.
At the same time, religious groups that did not want to perform religious same-sex marriages expressed concern in the consultation that they would be forced to do so, either under domestic legislation or after a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights.
At this point, the entire policy was at risk of being dropped. Senior politicians and officials felt that the political cost of stepping into the regulation of religious marriages would be too high, pushing already strained relationships with opposing Conservatives and religious groups to breaking point.
Advocates, however, pointed to the crucial precedent set by Lord Alli’s Equality Act amendment, which had allowed religious organisations to ‘opt in’ to perform religious civil partnerships, and protected those who chose not to from legal retribution. The government had to decide whether it would negotiate a path forward with religious organisations or drop the legislation altogether.
Ending
The consultation generated a fierce public debate. Opponents – including some religious groups, socially conservative voters and a tranche of Conservative MPs and peers – reacted vocally and were especially unhappy that the consultation’s framing was not whether the government should implement same-sex marriage but how it should do so.
The discussion was inflammatory and amplified by extensive media coverage. Mail Online ran an article by Lord Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, which claimed that marriage would “only remain the bedrock of society if it is between a man and a woman”, with a picture of two brides kissing, captioned “Threat… such communions would jeopardise the stability of the country”.
The Coalition for Marriage, a Christian campaigning group opposing same-sex marriage, submitted a petition to the consultation, which more than 650,000 people had signed.
The Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales released a letter condemning the government’s proposals, which was read out in 2,500 parish churches across England and Wales, and encouraged churchgoers to sign the petition. The position of some religious groups was more complex than their public stance.
A few participants at our policy reunion described how, while there was some ingrained homophobia within the Church of England, a significant number of clergy and churchgoers were open to the idea of reform – and remain so.
Cameron has also noted that some religious leaders – including Justin Welby – were privately more supportive than their public line.49 Meanwhile, pro-same-sex-marriage campaigners galvanised support from the LGBT+ grassroots. .
