I WELCOME Theresa May’s decision to extend civil partnerships to heterosexual couples.

Civil partnership was designed to give legal recognition to a close relationship without conferring the gravitas of traditional marriage.

Gay couples understandably resented being offered only this option while some heterosexual couples would have preferred it.

With civil partnership open to all it could again serve its unspoken purpose of maintaining the dignity of marriage.

This was previously seen as being threatened by same–sex marriage when the real affront to it comes from serial marriage and divorce.

In the future we will be able to deny marriage to those whose fickleness brings it into disrepute without the bind that this would also deny them the security and stabilising influence of a legal contract.

John Riseley, Harrogate