Government proposes silent marriage
Last week I told you how exasperated I was with our Government over marriage. Within days, I am back with worse. I have run out of epithets. The Ministry of Justice has published its rewrite of weddings law. Behind the castles-and-canal-boats headlines sits the real proposal – a bride could be married without saying a word, in the secrecy of a private home, on an officiant’s judgement of what her silence meant – and every couple’s vow loses its promise. Marriage – the lifelong union of one man and one woman, the gold standard for families and society – hollowed out from the inside.
Why does it keep going? In 2013, it redefined marriage. In 2022, no-fault divorce drained the vow’s legal weight. This summer, marriage rights given to couples who never married. And a draft Bill that could make teaching man-woman marriage a crime. Now the wedding itself.
The law would ask a couple to say one line – “I accept you as my husband, wife or spouse.” No promise to stay or be faithful – no “forsaking all others” in all 171 pages – and “spouse” is for couples who “do not identify with” husband and wife.
And astonishingly, in religious and belief ceremonies, even that line could go – consent could be deemed “through actions”, if an officiant and witnesses “share an understanding” of it. Read that again. Its example is the nikah exchange, and nowhere does it require either party to say one word at their own wedding. It permits this: a Muslim bride, veiled and silent throughout the nikah, married on others’ account of what her gestures meant – in a private home, even her own, while the paper itself admits forced marriage could be “harder to identify”. GB News found sharia-based services in Britain teaching that a virgin bride’s silence is “considered as implicit agreement”. In the Government’s own forced-marriage caseload. A bride’s silence must never be enough to marry her.
And who are the women this reform is supposedly for? Those in unregistered religious marriages. Last October, in these emails, I called for one marriage law for all – civil marriage with every religious ceremony, as the Government’s own sharia review recommended. When I called for one marriage law, I never imagined the answer would be aligning British with sharia practice – wordless consent brought in, the unregistered marriage left untouched – while the reform its own reviews demanded stays excluded. They will recognise the ceremony. They will not protect the woman.
And believers? “Conscience” appears nowhere in the whole 171 pages. The 2013 locks – the legal guarantee that no church and no minister can ever be forced to conduct a same-sex wedding – are nowhere restated, while every minister of religion, but those in the Church of England, would face an undefined state “fit and proper” test and five-yearly re-licensing. And you can guess what that fit and proper test will be looking for – a willingness to conduct same-sex weddings? These conscience protections held because they were on the face of an Act, left off this Bill, they are gone.
Please act. We cannot let this pass. Respond before 24 September – in your own words. Responses genuinely shape the Bill. Our full guide is here, the response form is here.
The introduction states one objective – to “strengthen the institution of marriage”. The next 171 pages propose the opposite. There is a word for saying one thing while doing another – and this consultation earns it on every page.