By a vote of the Scottish Parliment of 105 for Marriage Equality and 18 votes against. This is a fantastic blowout vote. It is unclear when marriages will begin but it is reported that probably sometime this year.
Update: I am assamed to admit that I totally missed the Scotland and John Barrowman connection even though I had previously written a diary on the subject (see Jasiu comments below): John BarowMan Gets Married from July of 2013.
Please share widely!
Scotland’s politics have been rather left-wing for a while. The Scottish National Party is a social democratic. For well over a decade they and the Labor Party have been the first two parties in any election. Currently, Scotland has just one Conservative MP in its delegation at the UK Parliament.
Maybe a our resident law scholar David or our resident parliamentarian Christopher can enlighten me-but didn’t the UK pass marriage equality already? Did the devolved powers only allow that to apply to England or are there other laws I am unaware of? And the media is being irresponsible calling it a country-they are not out of the UK yet!
only covered England and Wales. This was among the things in the devolved Scottish parliament’s bailiwick. And Scotland has always been a country. It’s not officially a sovereign nation-state, but it is a country.
I thought they were still granted 59 MPs under devolution.
I meant to say the UK marriage vote only covered England and Wales b/c, for Scotland, it was considered an internal matter that would be left to the Scottish parliament.
n/t
…but as Scotland has retained even before devolution a separate legal system, so yes, they get their MPs, but they also have their own traditions that weren’t entirely wiped out by either the ascension of James VI as James I or the 1707 Act of Union. Scotland’s and Wales’ devolution models aren’t exactly the same either. England conquered Wales point blank while there was more of a merger when it came to Scotland. Consequently Westminster serves both as a national legislature for the UK and like a state legislature for England, and retains more authority in Wales than it does in Scotland.
But that’s what happens when you were the first to be conquered, particularly when it was by Edward the Confessor
Edward I Longshanks, whose son the future Edward II was the first English Prince of Wales, a title of course used by the heir to the English crown to this day. Longshanks tried the same in Scotland as depicted in Braveheart and succeeded for a while, but then Robert the Bruce turned back the English army at Bannockburn.
Confessor gave up his kingdom for a horse and didn’t last past the Norman conquest. Longshanks it is
Mike, how did you manage to write this post and not include a reference to John Barrowman??? He and his husband can now go back to his homeland and have another ceremony there if they want!
I am hoisted on my own Petard for missing this connection!
I also like the more recent “slip of the tongue” that is “hoisted on my own Picard“.