A rainbow parade will whirl through London on June 27th to mark Pride, a weeklong gay jamboree. Britain's "LGBTQ+ community", the term used by the march's organisers to cover the ever-broadening spectrum of human sexuality, has plenty to celebrate. Since 2005 gay couples have been able to form civil partnerships, marriages in all but name. Since 2014 they have also been allowed to wed (except in Northern Ireland). Civil partnerships already conferred marriage-like rights and obligations. So before the parliamentary vote on equal marriage in 2013 traditionalists such as Philip Hammond, now the foreign secretary (who declined to fly the rainbow flag over British embassies this week, in contrast to his predecessor), opposed the law on the basis that "there was no huge demand for this". It turns out that they were wrong. Given the choice, most gay couples are opting to marry-and many in civil partnerships are converting.
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