A British Parliamentarian has called upon his government to ban Christian churches from performing marriage ceremonies if they refuse to perform same-sex unions.
The Conservative MP for Hove, Mike Weatherley, recently wrote to Prime Minister David Cameron insisting, “As long as religious groups can refuse to preside over ceremonies for same-sex couples, there will be inequality.”
Same-sex unions were legalized in 2004 in Britain but Churches were not compelled to marry couples if it did not fit in with their beliefs. Weatherley wrote that this law only acted as an “uneasy truce between those wishing to preserve the religious significance of marriage and those fighting for equality.”
Weatherley’s constituency includes many same-sex households, which makes him “increasingly concerned about the inequality which exists between the unions of same-sex couples and those of opposite-sex couples in this country.”
Weatherley wants the law to compel churches to register civil partnerships along the same lines of an earlier set of laws that compelled 11 Catholic adoption agencies to provide adoption services for same-sex couples.
Weatherley argued that until “we untangle” marriage and “religion in this country, we will struggle to find a fair arrangement.”