The virtue of the civil partnerships scheme lay in the attempt to treat the needs of gay and lesbian couples as what they are, not to bundle them into some other category.

If the rights of civil partners are met differently in law to those of married couples, there is no discrimination in law, and if civil partnerships are seen as somehow 'second class' that is a social attitude which will change and cannot, in any case, be turned around by redefining the law of marriage.

There is a difference between civil partnerships and marriage. That difference does not mean one is better than another.

Would we be a better society if we made marriage simply a private contract between two individuals, with no wider implications of kinship and family? I do not believe that we would.