Wyndham Hartley, Parliamentary Editor
Thursday, November 09, 2006 - BDFM - Online
CAPE TOWN - Major changes are to be made to the controversial Civil Unions Bill to ease its passage through Parliament in time to meet the Constitutional Court deadline of November 30.
Parliament's home affairs committee decided yesterday to slash the bill in half and to call all marriages civil unions.
The move signals a clear defeat for the conservative elements in the ANC's component of the committee and a significant rejection of the religious lobby, which wanted all references to marriage cut from the bill, which will also be "fast tracked".
This means that rules of Parliament, which say that three days have to elapse after a committee has approved the bill before the National Assembly can consider it, will be suspended. With Parliament expected to close next week, the rules may be suspended to get the bill through.
The committee also took a Democratic Alliance (DA) suggestion that all references to gender or sexual orientation be removed from the bill. Instead, the legislation will simply apply to a union of consenting adults regardless of their sexual orientation.
The committee has struggled in recent weeks with the bill because significant numbers in the ruling party shared the views of the religious community and traditional leaders that heterosexual marriages were devalued by allowing homosexual unions to use the same term. They have struggled to get in place a situation where homosexual couples could have a civil union that had the same rights in law but was not called a marriage.
Both groups suggested that instead of calling gay unions marriage, the equality clause in the constitution should be changed. In its present form, the bill also provides for domestic partnerships and the rights that should be enjoyed by people who have a permanent relationship but have not made it legally binding. At present people, particularly women and their children, in an unformalised partnership have no rights to pensions or maintenance should the relationship terminate.
The committee accepted a suggestion that the sections dealing with domestic partnerships should be scrapped from the bill and be brought back to Parliament next year as a stand- alone piece of legislation.
This will halve the work needed to be done on the bill.
Democratic Alliance (DA) MP Sandy Kalyan said the DA's suggestion of removing all references to gender had been accepted and was welcome. She also confirmed that the committee had accepted that where the bill referred to civil unions, the words "or marriage" would be included. This will ensure that the order of the Constitutional Court for equal rights will be met.
She said to separate civil unions from domestic partnerships was a good move because the legislation had been "contaminated" by putting the two issues into the same bill. Some MPs argued that having the two together in one bill placed homosexual unions on the same level as unsolemnised relationships rather than being equal to marriage, as ordered by the court.