This thread seems to me to have oddly lost its way long since. Monogamous permanent relationships for same-sex couples have been legally recognised for some years in the UK by the Civil Partnership Act of 2004. All of my several same-sex longstanding couple friends have availed themselves of it, and my late wife & I attended some pleasant parties to celebrate this. I can't see where statistics of the proclivity of persons of any particular orientation being more or less liable that others to contract certain diseases or disabilities, have any relevance to the question as to whether such relationships should now be permitted by our laws to introduce an element of religious vows into the formulation of the partnership & call it Marriage instead of Civil Partnership ~~ or even just to change the name Civil Partnership to Marriage, as with hetero couples who marry before the registrar rather than a minister of religion.

All these considerations being so vehemently debated here seem to me completely marginal to what the thread is really asking; and to be in any event way behind the fair, or locking the stable after the horse has bolted, or whatever other proverbial or idiomatic phrase for such considerings may take your fancy. There have, I repeat, been legally recognised same-sex partnerships for nearly 9 years now.

~M~