A homosexual couple has made history by becoming the first in England and Wales to take part in a legal ceremony to form a civil partnership in Leeds at 7.45am Wednesday Dec. 21st.

|TOP|The ceremony, which was made legal in Northern Ireland on Monday Dec. 19th, Scotland on Tuesday Dec. 20th, has now been made legal in England and Wales on Dec. 21st.

Following close behind were three other gay couples that took part in ceremonies in Brighton at 8am. Brighton, which will become the city holding the most amount of civil partnership ceremonies in the UK during December, will see 17 ceremonies taking place today, with a further 198 planned for the remainder of December.

Also highly publicised this week, have been the plans for celebrity Elton John to take part in a civil partnership ceremony in Windsor Guildhall, which played host to the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall in April this year.

|AD|The new civil partnership law will give gay couples the same property and inheritance rights as married heterosexuals and entitles them to the same pension, immigration and tax benefits. However, unlike in Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Canada it is not a marriage.

A statement released by the Evangelical Alliance in early December stated: “The Alliance believes there can never be moral equivalence between marriage and same-sex partnerships, even if legal equivalence is established.”

Don Horrocks, head of public affairs for the EAUK, said such a push for gay rights eventually takes away from the rights of those who may have a Christian perspective on marriage. He said, “It needs to be remembered that one group’s rights often involves another’s inequality.”

Another senior British clergyman has spoken out against the Civil Partnerships Act. Rev Peter Smith, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Cardiff said, “What the Government should do in terms of public policy is support marriage rather than undermine it. To put beside marriage an alternative or what appears to be a perfectly approved legal alternative lifestyle I think does not help the institution of marriage at all.”