Civil partnerships have become redundant

SIR – Tim Loughton, the Conservative MP (Letters, June 29), supports civil partnerships for opposite-sex couples. He says they should be able to register “love and commitment through a different sort of partnership”.

It seems that civil partnerships and marriages confer identical rights. It is hard to view them as different sorts of partnership in any legal sense.

No one is required to accept a patriarchal definition of marriage, change their name or refer to their other half as husband, wife, partner or even other half. Husbands need not be head of the household and nor need wives call themselves Mrs or stay at home. We all make of our marriages what we want and nobody knows unless we tell them.

In common between marriage and civil partnership is a public declaration of commitment to stick together and acceptance that, if that can’t happen, it isn’t going to be easy to get out of it.

Mr Loughton mentions 3.3 million cohabiting opposite-sex couples in Britain. Would they be happy with the level of commitment of marriage, if only it were not called marriage? It would be simpler to have a single legal recognition of relationship, whether between same or opposite sex couples. Let people get hitched and refer to themselves as they wish.

If we have civil partnership and marriage, there will be conversions from one to the other. If this can only be from partnership to marriage, the former will be seen as the lesser relationship. Julian Gall Godalming, Surrey

SIR – The National Trust for Scotland sadly seems to be joining the attack on marriage. Earlier this year, just before our 34th wedding anniversary, we received our annual membership cards, one with my husband’s name on it, the other inscribed “Dr Coe’s Partner”.

I am a wife, not a partner, and after a phone call I received a corrected card with my own name.

This week the NTS magazine came in the post, addressed to “Dr Coe and Dr Coe’s Partner”. I despair. Susan Coe Perth