Tell the UK Government to back humanist marriage

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To whom it may concern, I am writing to respond to the consultation on outdoor marriages and civil partnerships. I am responding as an individual and a humanist and wish to make clear that while I welcome the proposed reforms as enhancing freedom of choice (and therefore my response can be recorded as ‘Yes’ to questions 5, 18, and 20a-c), I think the Government must also extend legal recognition to humanist marriages. These reforms strengthen the case for doing so without any further delay. I wish to make my views clear on this by responding specifically to question 28.
<ol>
<li> Are you:</li>
</ol>
– an individual or representative of a company or body affected or potentially affected by this proposal.
<ol>
<li> Whether you are a person who has one or more protected characteristics as listed below, or represent persons who share one or more of these protected characteristics. If so, please specify which of these protected characteristics applies:</li>
</ol>
– religion or belief
<ol start="28">
<li> In addition to the ways in which your responses to the questions above touch on any impacts that you experienced as a person who has, or member of a group that shares, one or more protected characteristics, are there any other impacts that you have experienced or anticipate the proposal will have on those with protected characteristics? Please give reasons.</li>
</ol>
The Government should extend legal recognition of humanist marriages without further delay. Legal recognition of humanist marriages would:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">enhance freedom of choice, and of belief: humanist couples should have the same opportunity to marry in line with their beliefs as their religious counterparts</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">be democratic: 95% of respondents to the 2014 Ministry of Justice consultation supported it. A 2019 YouGov poll found 69% in favour and just 12% opposed, with a majority of every religious group in favour</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">be good for marriage: in Scotland, couples married in a humanist ceremony are almost four times less likely to divorce compared with all other types of marriages. The number of marriages has also stopped declining in Scotland since legal recognition</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">be popular: The number of humanist weddings in Scotland has risen since legal recognition in 2005 to over 6,000 in 2019 – over 20% of the total</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">be good for the economy: more marriages means more weddings, and all the economic benefits that brings</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">further the levelling up agenda: Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands, and Ireland all already have legally recognised humanist marriages</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">help with the marriage backlog: There is currently a backlog of couples wishing to get married post-Covid, and not enough registrars to go around. Many of those couples don’t want a civil marriage and just want their humanist wedding to be legally recognised. So extending legal recognition would clearly help with this.</li>
</ul>
In 2020, the High Court ruled that the failureto extend legal recognition to humanist marriages was 'discrimination'. However, the judge said that the discrimination could be justified for the time being by making reference to the Government's stated desire to conduct wholesale rather than piecemeal reform. This desire was considered to be legitimate because piecemeal reform was said to possibly introduce further discrimination. In particular, the inconsistent rules around who could and could not have outdoor marriages was cited as an example of such discrimination that might be introduced.
Now the Government is extending legal recognition to outdoor civil and religious marriages. That means three things.
First, the Government has engaged in the very kind of piecemeal reform that it said it was against in order to win the humanist marriage case.
Second, by introducing outdoor civil and religious marriages, it has also removed the barriers that were presented by the previously inconsistent rules on which marriages could be outdoors.
And third, the Government has in fact further discriminated against me and other humanists, because it has now allowed outdoor religious marriages to be legally recognised while still not allowing outdoor humanist marriages.
It is worth noting that this discrimination is more severe for LGBT people, as LGBT people are disproportionately likely to be non-religious and humanist, while most religious groups do not allow same-sex marriages. Humanists UK does more same-sex weddings every year without legal recognition than there are legally recognised same-sex religious marriages. The lack of choice afforded to people wanting same-sex marriages is therefore much more acute than for people wanting opposite-sex marriages.
Therefore the Government must now extend legal recognition to humanist marriages without further delay. It could even do so on an interim basis, initially, pending further reforms to marriage law following on from the Law Commission review. It can do this tomorrow by making use of the order-making power given to it by section 14 of the 2013 Marriage Act.
<ol>
<li> Do you agree that we have correctly identified the range and extent of the equalities impacts under these proposals set out in this consultation (see in particular page 46 of the consultation document)?</li>
</ol>
No
Please give reasons and supply evidence of further equalities impacts as appropriate. 
See previous answer. You have failed to recognise the impact that these reforms will have on the case for immediate legal recognition of humanist marriages.

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