Bermuda does a U-turn to bar gay marriages

BERMUDA has become the first country in the world to repeal samesex marriage laws.

Gay couples will only be allowed to form civil partnerships instead.

The legal U-turn comes less than a year after the Supreme Court ruled same-sex marriages could go ahead.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was yesterday criticised for failing to intervene in the British overseas territory.

In the Commons yesterday, junior Foreign Office Minister Harriet Baldwin said the Government was “disappointed” by the move.

But she told MPs that Mr Johnson had decided it “would not be appropriate” to use his power to block the legislation.

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She added: “This power can only be used where there is a legal or constitutional basis for doing so, and even then only in exceptional circumstances.”

Ms Baldwin insisted British overseas territories were “separate, selfgoverning jurisdictions with their own democratically elected representatives that have the right to selfgovernment”.

Voters on the island rejected samesex marriage in a referendum in 2016.

But the turnout was below the 50 per cent required for the result to be valid.

Labour MP Chris Bryant told the Commons: “However the Government tries to dress this up, it is a backward step for human rights.

“Gay and lesbian Bermudians have been told that they aren’t quite equal to everyone else. They have been told that they don’t deserve – this is the word being used – the full marriage rights that other Bermudians deserve.”

Around half a dozen same-sex marriages have taken place on the island since the Supreme Court ruling in May last year. None will be annulled, despite the U-turn.

Married gay Bermudian Joe Gibbons, 64, said yesterday: “I feel enormously disappointed.

“This is not equality and the British Government has obviously just said, ‘This is not our fight’.”

The island’s governor, John Rankin, issued a statement on Wednesday saying: “After careful consideration in line with my responsibilities under the constitution, I have today given assent to the Domestic Partnership Act.”

Ty Cobb, director of Human Rights Campaign Global, said: “Governor Rankin and the Bermuda Parliament have shamefully made Bermuda the first national territory in the world to repeal marriage equality.”

Walton Brown, Bermuda’s minister of home affairs, said: “The Act is intended to strike a fair balance between two irreconcilable groups in Bermuda, by restating that marriage must be between a male and a female, while at the same time recognising and protecting the rights of same-sex couples.

“The British Government recognises that this is a local government decision.”