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Gay Britons Signing Up as Unions Become Legal

BY ALAN COWELL
LONDON, Dec. 5 - From Brighton to Birmingham and beyond, gay and lesbian couples began registering Monday for the first ceremonies later this month legally recognizing same-sex unions in Britain.

As a new law permitting what are called civil partnerships came into force, at least 1,200 couples scheduled ceremonies to take place beginning Dec. 19 in Northern Ireland, Dec. 20 in Scotland and Dec. 21 in England and Wales.

"This is an important piece of legislation that gives legal recognition to relationships which until now were invisible in the eyes of the law," said Meg Munn, a government minister.

The Times of London, once the staid voice of the establishment, extended the Births, Marriages and Deaths column in its Court and Social Register pages on Monday to include a new category, Civil Partnerships. In it, two male couples and a female couple announced their intentions.

Some of the first to register were couples in longstanding relationships, like Roger Lockyer, 77, and Percy Steven, 66, of central London.

"Britain has been in the Dark Ages over this, but today we have made the first step into the 21st century," Mr. Steven, a former actor and lecturer, told the Press Association news agency.

The biggest number of registrations, 510, were recorded in Brighton, on the south coast. In a sampling of registrations elsewhere, 140 couples registered in central London, and 5 in Aberdeen, in the north of Scotland.

The law allows same-sex couples in civil partnerships to benefit from some of the same financial benefits as married heterosexual couples, like tax breaks on inherited real estate and pension rights. The ceremony will resemble civil marriages between heterosexuals performed in a registry office.

But some of those registering Monday saw a broader significance. "It is very important to the heterosexual community to realize that there are homosexual couples and give them their due rights," Mr. Lockyer said.

Homosexuality is still a divisive issue within the Anglican church, and soccer crowds have been singled out as sources of homophobic abuse. But more generally, homosexuality seems more accepted than it was a generation ago. The British military lifted a ban on openly gay people five years ago.

Sir Elton John has announced plans to enter into a civil union on Dec. 21 with his longtime partner, David Furnish, a 43-year-old filmmaker, who said in a recent interview with the gay men's life style magazine Attitude: "It is a major, major change. It is one of the defining issues of our times. And I applaud Britain for embracing the diversity of our society."

Across Europe, the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain have, like Canada, enacted laws legalizing same-sex marriage, but other countries offer gay people forms of partnership with more restricted rights than heterosexual marriage. In 1999, France introduced a civil contract for cohabiting couples irrespective of gender, and Germany has enacted legislation for "life partnerships" for gay people.

Elsewhere, South Africa's highest court ruled last week that prohibitions against same-sex marriage are unconstitutional.

In the United States, Connecticut followed Vermont last September in recognizing same-sex civil unions, Massachusetts permits same-sex marriages, and California has a broad domestic partnership law. But federal law does not recognize same-sex unions, and many states define marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

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