Derry is to hold its first Civil Partnership ceremony on Friday when a lesbian couple and 50 guests celebrate their legal union.
The ceremony will be held in the Guildhall, and it is the first of six currently planned for the city, most of which will be held early in the New Year.
A civil partnership was provisionally booked for the Guildhall yesterday which would have been the first in the UK. However, it did not go ahead because the two weeks' notice period was not received by the city registrar. It is also thought that the media hype and condemnation from a local Church group also led to the couple not going ahead with the ceremony.
Speaking to the 'Journal' yesterday, District registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages and registrar of Civil Ceremonies, Brian Barr said: "We have the first civil ceremony on Friday and there will be 50 guests attending it. I'd like people to know, that we in the council are very proactive with this. I have designed a ceremony although the Law doesn't require it, but we want to make it a special day for the couple. We would also encourage more couples to come down and talk to us about the ceremony."
When asked about possible protests, Mr. Barr said: “The Law states that ceremonies are to be held with open doors, we can close the doors but we can't lock them. We are not putting any special security on, and there is nothing to stop someone coming in and watching a ceremony. We can't ask them to leave, but if someone does start to object then there is a process by which they will be asked to leave. However we are not aware of any protests coming up.”
Local civil rights activist and journalist Eamonn McCann attended the first civil ceremony in the UK at Belfast City Hall when friend Grainne Close from Co. Antrim exchanged vows with partner Shannon Sickles, from New York yesterday. He said:
“There was a small and rather sad protest outside and there was not more than 30 protesters. They were not abusive, they were witnessing their beliefs and the anti-gay message.
“Fundamentalists who believe that gay sex is sinful are entitled to their beliefs, however, they are not entitled to demand that people are to be at a disadvantage in society because they don't conform to a book written thousands of years ago.”
He added: “The Civil Partnership Act is part of the Civil Rights Campaign, part of Irish freedom, British freedom and freedom of the world. It is about equality, civil rights and celebrating the happiness of two friends of myself and my family's.”
David McCartney from the Rainbow Project, which promotes gay rights, echoed Mr. McCann's sentiments.
He said: “People have a right to protest peacefully and I have no problem with that, however I do see a problem with one section of society dictating to another section. The Partnership Act is a basic human right, it's about equality and inclusion and I think promoting homophobia is the same as promoting racism and anti-Semitism.”
In a strongly worded statement from the Government and Morals Committee of the Free Presbyterian Church, spokesperson for the committee in Derry, Reverend Ian Brown stated that by allowing same sex couples to ‘marry’, it “allowed homosexual activists to gleefully tick another box on their checklist of demands. It does not seem to concern them that God views their legislative success not as a quest for equality, but an exercise in perversity,” he claimed.
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