‘It's Made a Huge Difference’: Recognition, Rights and the Personal Significance of Civil Partnership

In this paper we map briefly some of the arguments around the meaning andsignificance of the introduction of Civil Partnership in England and Wales, andin this way show how contested these meanings are with some groups profoundlyagainst this legal reform and others supporting it, but for a mixture ofreasons. We then turn to our empirical data based on interviews with same-sexcouples to explore the extent to which these arguments and issues are part ofthe everyday decision making processes of same sex couples who have decided toregister their partnerships or to undergo a commitment ceremony of some kind. Indoing this, we were interested in how people make their own meanings (if theydo) and whether they actually frame important decisions in their lives aroundthe ideas that are part of the current political debates. We are interested inwhether the public debates (such as legal equality) are featured in the accountsof our interviewees but we are also concerned to reveal whether other issues areimportant to same sex couples when they decide to have their relationshippublicly recognised in some way. We found for example that while equality andlegal rights were important, love, commitment and respect from wider familyfeatured just as strongly in people's accounts.