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Loading ...Lone lesbian MP to have civil partnership
09.11.2008 4:24pm EDT
(London) The only openly lesbian member of Britain’s Parliament is to exchange vows with her longtime partner. But the public announcement of the impeding ceremony took Treasury Minister Angela Eagle and her partner by surprise.
It came during a speech at a trade union conference by another member of the House – Harriet Harman, the deputy government leader in the Commons.Harman was taking questions and answers following a speech to union organizers in Brighton. Asked about pensions for same-sex couples under the UK’s civil partnership law, Harman revealed that Eagle and longtime partner Maria Exall, an engineer with British Telephone, will exchange vows later this month.
Journalists in the hall noted a surprised look on the faces of both Exall and Eagle. The impending ceremony was to have been a secret, known only to a select number of friends.
“I wasn’t expecting her to say this and I suspect Harriet wasn’t expecting to say it either. But it is not a state secret,” Eagle told reporters.
The couple later issued a statement saying: “Maria and I are looking forward to making our relationship official and celebrating this with our friends and family later this month.”
Eagle and Exall met 18 years ago at a Labor Party event in London.
Eagle publicly came out in 1997 in an interview with a national newspaper and has been an MP since 1992.
The civil partnership law was passed by the Labor government three years ago.
Anyone in UK wanna “Marry” me then? American (soon to be former) citizen looking for new, good home…. low maintenance here.
Will be happy with a bit of food, water and little love.
cheers.
The UK law is indeed an exact copy of marriage except for name, obligation of ceremony and location. I’m very happy with my 3 partnership. Interestingly, it has a model clause on ‘full faith’ recognition of same-sex marriage/union/partnership internationally. ALL such relationships are regarded as being ‘married’ for the purposes of other aspects of UK law such as immigration adoption. As such it is probably the best such law in the world – a US citizen in Vt/Ma/Ca ‘marriage’ (not sure which allows one foreign partner) with a UK citizen would have many more rights after moving to the UK.
LOrion: The gay climate in Britain is a lot more friendlier than we have here in the U.S. A straight member of parliament announcing the civil partnership of one of her colleagues and met with applause by her peers is unprecedented. How would that fare in our own political system? Britain has achieved far more equality for its LGBT people than we can imagine in our own. Civil partnerships in Britain confer ALL of the rights of marriage at the national level, they are “marriages” in everything but name, and I can foresee when they will be officially recognized as such, inevitable I think, unlike our own civil unions that only confer roughly more than 400 rights and privileges of the 1324 that marriage bestows. Entering into a civil partnership entitles a couple to take the other’s name, adopt children among all of the other rights of marriage.
Wonderful…congratualtions to them both, I am sorry they are more celebratory themselves. Is the anit-gay climate in Britain worsening?