Editorial: Same-sex marriage just as sacred

Seventy years of marriage is a staggering feat in anyone's language.

Seven decades holding the same hand, preparing the same favourite meals, growing old alongside the body and mind of your beloved.

Seventy Christmas Days, 70 birthdays and 70 anniversaries - all those unwanted books and socks.

Eric McGarva and the love of his life, Dorothy (known as Joyce), reckon they've never had an argument in 70 years of marriage.

This inspiring story comes on the back of a report we ran last Saturday revealing the slump in marriages across the Bay.

Marriage rates in Tauranga have fallen for the fifth year in a row according to Statistics New Zealand figures. Since 2007, when 610 marriages were registered in the city, there has been a 12 per cent decline to 536 last year. The figures follow a national trend and are echoed by sharply falling divorce rates.

Any trend away from broken homes is to be welcomed.

Yesterday's front page carried the story of $31 million owed to Western Bay children because of unpaid child support. It is well-documented that most couples are financially better off when they are together, sharing the cost of running a household, but the struggle to make ends meet when couples go their separate ways must add a stressful burden to the emotional toll of ending a relationship.

Marriage is an important institution but a lot has changed since Eric and Joyce became man and wife in the early 1940s. For one thing, openly gay relationships are now commonplace and there are growing calls for governments to legalise gay marriage.

This month, United States President Barack Obama announced what the Miami Herald described as a "historic shift". He declared his personal support for gay marriage.

Prime Minister John Key was, naturally, asked for his view. He said he would support a bill to legalise same-sex marriage at its initial stage but would not guarantee his support through to the final reading.

A buck each way, then.

New Zealand's legislation to introduce civil unions was a progressive leap forward but it's time we shrugged off the bigotry embedded in our marriage laws and accepted that a marriage can be just as sacred, just as loving and just as fraught, whether the two people in that relationship are of the same or opposite sexes.