An exciting announcement: in June, the Belfast Court of Appeal ruled that humanist marriages must be legally recognised in Northern Ireland. This weekend, the first two legal marriages to follow that ruling will occur.
On Saturday, Emma Taylor and Paul Malone will be getting married at Queen’s University Belfast, while on Sunday, Alanna McCaffrey and Ronan Johnson will be getting married in County Fermanagh. Their celebrants are Stewart Holden and Lara Harris. Their marriages are the first legal humanist marriages to occur since Laura Lacole’s and Eunan O’Kane’s last summer.
We’ve put the news out to media this morning and we’re optimistic that the Northern Ireland press will pick up on it in the coming days.
A growing trend around the UK and crown dependencies
The news comes not long after new stats showed that in 2017 in Scotland, Humanist Society Scotland overtook the Church of Scotland to become the largest single provider of religion or belief marriages. We’re very much hoping that Northern Ireland will enter the same trajectory.
We’re also continuing to work away on seeing the new marriage law coming into force in Jersey as well, and in July we responded to a second consultation by the States of Guernsey in which it’s proposing to follow Jersey’s lead.
As for England and Wales, we’re continuing to plug away at getting the law changed here too – and hope to have more to say about that in the coming weeks.
But, for this week, let’s celebrate the good news out of Northern Ireland – which is on its way to becoming a kinder, more rational society.