The British Government announced in December 2013 that same sex marriages could take place beginning March 29, 2014. It’s been a long time coming since the country’s 1971 “Nullity of Marriage Act” which explicitly banned same-sex marriages. Around that time, the Government also refused Scientologists from getting married, among other things. A 1970 High Court ruling said Scientology services were not “acts of worship,” therefore citizens could not get legally married in a Scientology chapel. Until now…
A couple of 25-year-old Scientologists, Louisa Hodkin and her now husband Alessandro Calcioli, started legal action five years ago that recently resulted in the Supreme Court ruling that their chapel in Blackfriars, London is a “place of meeting for religious worship.” (They were married there this weekend.) While the number of Scientology members remains unclear (The Church of Scientology claims a membership of 118,000 in the UK while the 2001 census gave a figure of 1,781), the ruling was the first official recognition of Scientology as a religion. Many political and economic advantages comes from being categorized as a religion, but Ms. Hodkin said her goal was a simple matter of “being treated equally.” UK Supreme Court justice Lord Wilson, who sat for both the Scientology and same-sex marriage cases, said (regarding the latter): “The availability of marriage properly dignifies same-sex love. To the question: ‘Why should same-sex couples who can, as civil partners, already enjoy all relevant rights, be allowed to get married?’ The proper response in my view is: ‘Why shouldn’t they?'” The same, apparently, holds true for English Scientologists.
