Same-sex marriage
In July 2013, UK Parliament passed the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act, introducing civil marriage for same-sex couples in England and Wales. Scotland followed seven months later.
It feels unbelievable that this right was withheld for so long – and still is throughout the world. Yet its arrival, and the marriages that followed in the decade since, is a triumph of love over hate. Here, we celebrate just some of those stories…
Jo Muskett (she/her) and Alice Wright (she/her)
The couple met in 2009 when they both worked at an art gallery in Coventry, where they live. They got together in 2011, and married in 2016 at the local registry office
JO: It was all really secretive at first, as we worked together. I really fancied Alice. I’d always thought she had a bit of a crush on me, but we didn’t hang out in the same circles. Then there was an event, and we’d been drinking, and suddenly it was a bit of a thing.
ALICE: After that event, we’d email each other all night, silly things, poetry and that kind of stuff, so I suppose it was a proper romance in a lot of ways.
It was complicated to start with. Jo has two children, who were very young at the time. We had to play that carefully. My mum, who is probably Jo’s biggest fan now, wasn’t thrilled when I came home and said I’d fallen in love with a woman 10 years older than me. But we had a really good foundation.
JO: Probably the moment I ‘knew’ was when she said, ‘All I’ve ever wanted is someone to read the paper in bed with on a Sunday morning.’ I thought that was perfect.
I proposed on Alice’s 30th birthday. I took her to Bristol for the weekend. I’d got all these grand plans about proposing in this amazing lido that she’d been to with her mum, but I totally bottled it. I spent the day wondering how I was going to do it. We were wandering around and I saw the suspension bridge, so I suggested we go on it. But Alice said, ‘I’m not going on there! You’ve got to pay.’ I said I’d pay, but she said, ‘No, I’m not going, I’m not bloody paying.’ I didn’t know what to do. We sat on the grass near the suspension bridge and in the end I did it there.
ALICE: I so wanted to get married, but it was hard knowing so many LGBTQ+ people around the world don’t get that opportunity. I came out when I was 16. When I was at school, we didn’t cover LGBTQ+ relationships. All my friends were straight growing up. I went to straight clubs; I didn’t walk down the street holding my girlfriends’ hands. To be able to get married felt like a massive privilege.
JO: For queer couples in other countries not to have equal marriage rights is so unfair. Why shouldn’t we be marrie
