Humanist Marriage - our response to Law Commission consultation
On 4th January, we submitted our response to the Law Commission consultation "Getting Married", which is looking at wide-ranging reforms of marriage law to bring it up to date.
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A hodgepodge of different rules now apply to different groups and forms of wedding, and don't allow for legally-recognised humanist marriage ceremonies at all.
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The Law Commission proposes replacing these rules with consistent legal requirements intended to cater equally for all religion and belief groups, and to remove unnecessary regulations that increase the costs of getting married (for some groups but not others) and prevent couples from making their own decisions about where they marry, who marries them, what the ceremony contains and how it is conducted.
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Our response supports most of the Commission's proposals, but regrets that the legal recognition of humanist marriage has already been waiting for over seven years since the 2013 Marriage Act, and will be further delayed because the government refuses to do anything to deal with this grossly discriminatory situation until it has reviewed the whole of marriage law.
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You can read our response here.