Love Matters (Archbishops’ Commission on Families and Households Report)

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

Friday 8th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Herbert of South Downs (Con)]

My Lords,

“Marriage is a vital social institution. The exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other nurtures love and mutual support; it brings stability to our society. For those who choose to marry, and for their children, marriage provides an abundance of legal, financial, and social benefits. In return it imposes weighty legal, financial, and social obligations”.


These are not my words but those of Chief Justice Marshall delivering the judgment of the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 2003—the case that decided that same-sex marriage should be lawful in the first state in the United States. The words are so powerful that they are often read out at the weddings of opposite and same-sex couples. I am proud to have read them at the wedding of a close friend. We stood on a beach on the west coast of California. As the ceremony progressed, it became clear that the tide was racing in. In the case of this reform, the tide of public opinion is moving in only one direction.

In 2003, when that case was decided, there was only 50% of public support in Massachusetts for same-sex marriage. In December last year, that number had risen to 83%. We all know that opinion poll approval ratings of any issue are very rarely that high. That has been the experience of this reform worldwide. Same-sex marriage is now permitted in 35 countries, covering a population of 1.4 billion—17% of the world’s people. On 1 January, Estonia will become the 36th country. Perhaps the arc of the moral universe does, in this case, bend towards justice.

In England and Wales, this reform has now been in place for a decade. I am very proud to have played a part in that, having set up the Freedom to Marry campaign and voted for the change in the House of Commons. In the 14 years that I was a Member of Parliament, there were very few occasions on which the votes I cast pleased my constituents; much of the time, my voting made my constituents furious or unhappy, as we sought to tax them, regulate them, or restrict their lives in some way. The only effect of this vote was to create happiness and joy. The vote did no harm to anyone else. As the years have gone by, the arguments against the change have fallen away. I do not seek to relitigate those arguments today.

I noted what my noble friend Lady Stowell said about the Members of Parliament who voted against the change—some of them in good conscience, and others because they were fearful of the reaction of their constituency activists. Of those in the last camp, many have since expressed their regret and apology—including in formal statements in the House of Commons—for the decisions they took. They found themselves unwelcome at the weddings of friends or of the children of friends. They found themselves facing difficulty in their own conscience about going to those events when they had sought to prevent them taking place.

Thanks to the decision of Tony Blair’s Government—but with the support of the Conservative Front Bench—to introduce civil partnerships, I was very grateful to have entered into one. It was one of the most important things I have done in my life. I remember mentioning—I thought only in passing—to my then partner and now husband that it might be a good idea, since this legislation had been introduced, to consider entering a civil partnership. I forgot, of course, that he was a lawyer. That evening, the forms that one had to fill in to apply for a civil partnership had been completed, complete with yellow Post-it notes where I was required to sign, and placed by the bedside table.

For a while, I thought that entering into the civil partnership was enough—after all, it conferred all the legal rights and entitlements of a marriage. I came to realise that it was not. As we advanced the arguments for this change, I saw how important the institution of marriage was. It is one of the joys of the legislation that it creates the legal fiction that a couple who entered into a civil partnership and changed that to a marriage are deemed to have been married from the date of their civil partnership. That in itself expresses the importance of the change.

In 2018, there were 6,700 same-sex marriages in England and Wales. That is something like 3% of the total number. That might seem a low figure, but it is of immense importance to the individuals concerned. Significantly, it is six or seven times the number of civil partnerships. As the institution of civil marriage became available to same-sex couples, their choice was not overwhelmingly to enter civil partnerships but to enter into marriage. That says something about the enduring importance of the institution in the eyes of a section of society.

The report notes that in 2019, religious ceremonies accounted for less than one in five opposite-sex marriages. That is a sharp decrease from the year before. It also notes that 0.7% of marriages conducted in a religious institution in that year were of same-sex couples. There is, of course, a fundamental difference. Religious marriage is in decline by choice. I regret that, and I have no doubt that most noble Lords will regret it too. However, the number of same-sex religious marriages is so low not by choice, but because the individuals are forbidden by our established Church from getting married in their institutions. That is a decision of the established Church, that, while I disagree with it, I wholly respect.

As my noble friend Lady Stowell said, religious freedom is absolutely fundamental and is enshrined in the legislation that introduced same-sex marriage. It should be a matter for each church denomination to decide what it is appropriate for it to do. I note that the United Reform Church, the Methodist Church of Great Britain and the Church of Scotland have all decided that they will introduce same-sex marriages, and that the Church of England Synod decided narrowly that it would bless same-sex marriages from 1 January. I do not underestimate how difficult that debate has been, but this is an important step in the right direction. The most reverend Primate said in his speech that families come in all shapes and sizes and are not simply nuclear. Of course, today that is simply true. However, there are devout same-sex couples who want no more than that their marriage should be consecrated in church.

It is refreshing to be debating love when so much of today’s news seems to be about hate. We see a tale of two worlds. One world is the world I described, where human rights are flourishing and progress towards important reforms is happening. However, we see another world too, where human rights are not only not moving forward but going backwards—and no more so than in Uganda, which recently passed what can only be described as the most hateful legislation, discriminating against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Indeed, it is arguably the most discriminatory and repressive legislation introduced by any democratic country, creating the death penalty for aggravated offences. What is extraordinary is that the Archbishop of Uganda said that he was “grateful” for that Anti-Homosexuality Act. I congratulate the most reverend Primate, who clearly rebuked the archbishop. He called on international bodies that represent conservative churches to make explicitly and publicly clear that the criminalisation of LGBTQ people is something no Anglican province can support, and that this must be stated unequivocally.

I appreciate the concerns that leaders of the Anglican Church have about schism. However, these laws are nothing less than hateful. I am afraid it is true that many of them are being driven by religious fundamentalism, not just in Islam, but also in some elements of the Christian Church. No religious leader would want to feel that they are on the wrong side of the history. Rather, I suggest that they will want to be on the right side of what is becoming an increasingly stark moral divide.

As the Prime Minister’s special envoy on LGBT rights, I have the great privilege of travelling the world. When I visit countries, the first meetings I ask to hold are always with the activists in those countries, sometimes very brave people, who are campaigning for nothing more than the same rights we enjoy in our country. In one such meeting a few months ago, I was joined, at his own expense, by my husband. As is usual in these situations, we went around the room introducing ourselves. When it came to my husband’s turn, he said that he was my husband. With that, one of the activists burst into tears, simply because, for him, the idea that somebody could be themselves and enter into not just a union but a marriage with his same-sex partner was so profound and so out of reach for that individual in his country that it expressed something immensely important to him—so important that it moved him to tears. Marriage is a public statement as well as a private commitment. That is why the reform of same-sex marriage mattered so much.

The commission which set up this report asked:

“How can we support every family to flourish? What kind of society do we want to live in?”


That is the right question. It is one that was answered by another Chief Justice, the Chief Justice of the United States, delivering the judgment of Obergefell in 2015, which said that same-sex marriage was lawful throughout the United States. I hope noble Lords will forgive me for quoting a very short piece of that judgment to end my remarks.

“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfilment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilisation’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right”.