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Civil Service

by | 11th, January 2006

‘EVER hear of the Local Authorities Coordinators of Regulatory Services?

Indeed, it does sound like the kind of body peopled by colourless men with oiled hair and thick breath that hints of stale ginger snap biscuits, milky Earl Grey tea and Thai brides.

But today the lid is lifted off this fusty world and the Mirror tells us that in light of Lacors’s recommendations two marriage rooms at Wolverhampton Register Office have been renamed wedding rooms.

It’s the same at Stourbridge, where happy couples looking for the Marriage Suite are being redirected to the Crown Suite.

The word “marriage” has been removed so as not to offend gay couples, now able to be legally united in a civil partnership ceremony.

And the Mail is outraged. The paper says that “all signs” are to change. All register offices which oversee more than 180,000 weddings a year will make no reference to marriage “except where it is legally necessary”.

So town halls are being asked: “Is your signage correct? Have you considered changing the name of your marriage room to something that will be suitable for both?”

This does not sound so awful. The details of the story seem at odds with the Mail’s opening line that the “words marriage and wedding are to be purged from register offices”.

It’s more that the new ceremonies will be shoehorned in with the old. New signs need to say Registrars of Births, Deaths, Marriages and Civil Partnerships.

Perhaps the Mail would rather gay couples did not know where to go? Or that councils stick arrows on the walls saying “Civil Partnership Ceremonies this way” – arrows which lead the gay couple, their friends and families into a basement dungeon?

Perhaps it would.

But until then, the Mail will have to put up with gays mixing with the upright straights. Although it should note that decent society will not be too affected – what with it being sat in church…’



Posted: 11th, January 2006 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink