Britain Came From Behind on Gay Marriage (Now Ahead) and Validated All Those Relationships

The Guardian,

Gay marriage: 'I now feel validated, true and, overall, as equal as any other human being on this wonderful blue marble'. Photograph: Carl De Souza/AFP/Getty Images

Today, after many years of feeling somehow lesser than my heterosexual counterparts, a feeling fuelled by political and religious views expressed in our supposed free and unbiased media, I now feel validated, true and, overall, as equal as any other human being on this wonderful blue marble. I hope religious opponents of gay marriage (The gay marriage debate has uncovered a nest of bigots, 5 February) can find some heart in their own beliefs to understand that, just as I wish them no harm or would ever feel so righteous as to demand they behave one way or another, all I wish for is that we all, religious or non-religious, are allowed a happy and fulfilled life, driven by our collective desire to ensure all people are treated with the same love and wonder. I look forward now with great happiness to the day when I marry my love, Robin, and I hope when that day comes you will all celebrate with me. 
Tim Molloy
London

• The vote on gay marriage leads me to think that most religious people are not bigots, despite the fact there is still too much bigotry among both those with religion and those without it. The problem with the legislation is that it will not, as it aspires to, produce equality, but uniformity. Surely, in a society encompassing numbers of groups with widely diverging views on religious and non-religious issues, we should be doing our best to avoid legislation that produces winners and losers, making us more divided. It would be less divisive to make civil partnerships the only way anyone could take advantage of what used to be offered only to the married.
Ralph Stevens
Epping, Essex

• Just as Cameron cannot speak for all conservatives, the bishops cannot speak for all Anglicans and Roman Catholics. Many Christians, like many conservatives, are glad that some equality will come at last to those whose sexual orientation has precluded them from marriage. For gay people it has been a long time coming and I hope we can soon celebrate the marriages of our gay friends and relations in the same way as we do for us straight people.
Canon John Foskett
Dorchester

• David Cameron says we have stepped forward and become stronger by the same-sex parliamentary vote. I see that we have stepped backwards and become weaker, because the voice of human conscience says clearly that whichever way we look, love only comes by looking outwards to the Creator and that sexuality needs to be related to the possibility of having offspring in the natural designs. 
Father Bryan Storey
Tintagel Catholic Church, Cornwall

• I believe a UK marriage is currently accepted worldwide, which has particular importance for visa applications, work permits and health and social security, when a couple moves overseas. A civil partnership, however, is binding only in the UK and certain other countries which recognise it. If David Cameron can ensure that all countries, no matter how intolerant their own laws, will recognise a UK marriage between a couple of the same sex, then he is indeed making history. 
Chris Hosty
Birmingham

• Is a wording for gay marriage emerging? In Quaker marriages, the couple promise to be loving and faithful. But the promises are not directed from one to the other but are addressed to those present with the wording: "Friends, I take this my friend (name) to be my to be my wife (husband) to be unto her a loving and faithful husband (wife)." So the promises are made to the community of friends, placing marriage as an institution in the community.
Philip Baker
Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire

• In view of the fact that the word marriage now means something different, can we have a new word for what it used to mean, please?
Stuart Raymond
Trowbridge, Wiltshire

• So grassroots Tories think a vote to permit gay and lesbian couples to marry could have disastrous consequences for Conservative prospects at the next election? Sounds like a win-win situation.
Martin Price
Poole. Dorset