Review of new U.K. Civil Partnership law.

This is from today's Daily Telegraph the leading r/w broadsheet, an interesting look at the differences and similarities between marriage and the forthcoming U.K. civil partnerships.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/10/06/nlaw06.xml

All-embracing partnership Act
(Filed: 06/10/2005)

Benefits on offer under forthcoming 'gay marriages' are available to almost any unrelated couple of the same sex, writes Joshua Rozenberg, Legal Editor

What are civil partnerships really for? The campaign group Stonewall answers the question with admirable clarity: "Civil partnership is a new legal relationship for lesbian and gay couples, aged 16 and over". But life is never that simple.

As the distinguished family lawyer Stephen Cretney explains in his Clarendon Lectures, to be delivered in Oxford later this month and published by Oxford University Press, the new legislation does not require civil partners to be homosexual or indeed to have a sexual relationship of any kind. They do not even need to live together.

The benefits on offer under the Civil Partnership Act 2004 are available to pretty well any unrelated couple of the same sex aged 16 or over, provided neither of them is already married. All they need to do is to sign a document before a registrar in the presence of each other and of two witnesses.