The first ceremonies under the Civil Partnerships Act took place in Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales in December 2005. At the time, campaigners said the law ended inequalities for same-sex couples. Meg Munn, minister for equality, said: "It accords people in same-sex relationships the same sort of rights and responsibilities that are available to married couples."
Smart calls the event a "milestone" that "is marriage by any other name, essentially".
She adds: "Legally speaking, there's only a tiny difference. "The actual allowing of same-sex couples to enter into a state-recognised, basically marriage, with all the same obligations, the same safeguards and so on is really, really significant."
To many Christians, however, while a civil partnership confers all the legal rights of marriage, a church wedding is seen as a mystical event, the making of promises before God in a sacred setting, endowing the relationship with a special "blessed" quality.
Marriage "obligations, safegaurds, and so on..." is deliberately vague.
Traditionally marriage consummated a relationship, creating a bond welded by God. This is the "Holy Matrimony" provided by the church.
A preponderance of citizens are living together and raising children outside legal marriage and generally without the blessing of the church.
This current homosexual marriage debacle will force the church to address marriage as a holy sacrament.
I foresee holy matrimony without state legal contract as vital to the role of the church in society. In this way the church and the couple are able to achieve a condition of relationship outside the constraints of the state. Legal entanglements have been, I believe, the primary motivation for couples living together outside state controlled marriage.
In fact, I am considering creating a "Holy Matrimony Chapel" to allow couples to sanctify their love for each other and their commitment to raise children as a purely sacred act without benefit of government licensure. The state may no more control Holy Matrimony than they can control baptism, communion, burial or any other rite of the church. Indeed, let them try.
It will also force changes in the way married couples are taxed and will force changes in things like social security.