UK House of Commons passes gay marriage for England and Wales
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Yesterday evening, the UK House of Commons passed gay marriage for England and Wales. Now it goes to the House of Lords. This means that there's still a long way to go before it becomes law.
The sad point in all this is that the government refused to allow amendments that would end LGBT discrimination that go with gay marriage and civil partnerships; ie pensions. So even though we are gonna be treated as less "separate", we are still gonna be legally discriminated against.
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During the debate on the pensions amendment, they discussed a real case.
A man paid into his pension pot all his working life and as soon as civil unions became legal in the UK he and his partner got one. He died last year.
His gay civil partner gets £500 a year in survivor benefits. HOWEVER, if he was hetero, his wife would have gotten £41,000 a year.
If the law was changed to make pensions equal, it would cost £18 million or 0.00000006% (7 zeros after the decimal point) of the total pension pot for the UK. The coalition government said this is too high a price to justify equality in pensions.
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Bullshit that argument. A tank for the army cost much more …
