Today was the day of last minute preparation for tomorrow’s civil partnership for me and my partner. So the house is tidy, the food laid in, clothes laid out ready, the flowers delivered, shoes shined. I have collected my sister from the station and my eldest daughter has returned from work to be followed by my youngest daughter and her boyfriend. The house is full of people and talk. As the night lengthens the house retires to bed and I am left to write and post the blog. Tomorrow the family and friends come together to celebrate and at noon my partner will be protected from the vagaries of our culture’s laws, customs, prejudices and discrimination. My affairs will be in order and our relationship honoured and pledged.

Today I read that the Church of England bishops have declared that marriage between different sex people is still the only relationship in which sex should take place. They see civil partnerships of same sex and different sex couples as being relationships for abstinence from sex. Old, mostly men, who dress up, claim a special relationship with a deity telling everyone else how they should live and what is right for them. Religionists at their worst and most damaging, an outdated, irrelevant institutionalised and establishment mechanism that needs to be purged. It would seem they have an ally in cancer. Those who fall ill can only protect their families by succumbing to the power that the state and church impose. Clearly the state does not trust its citizens to make reasonable, rational and responsible relationships without it, and will penalise those who do even in death.