Foreign Office Minister Chris Bryant
will be the first openly gay MP to tie the knot in Britain's Houses
of Parliament, the Guardian reported.
The weekend wedding, however, will not
take place in the Chapel of St. Mary – as is customary for
marriages – because gay couples cannot marry in England and civil
partnerships are not allowed in church.
Bryant and his partner Jared Cranney
will instead hold Saturday's ceremony in the members' dining room,
which overlooks the Thames river.
“When I was born, it was illegal to
be gay in Britain and until the last 13 years progress was painfully
slow,” Byant told the paper. “Jared and I are really looking
forward to getting married in Parliament, as so many straight couples
have before us, because it's Parliament that has made it possible.”
“Some people talk of 'broken
Britain', but Britain is in many ways an infinitely better place than
it was 13 years ago, when we didn't even have an equal age of
consent,” he adds. “I saw [gay activist] Peter Tatchell's 1996
list of what had to be achieved by a Labour government – civil
partnerships, gays in the military, adoption, equal age of consent –
and every single one of them has been done. Civil partnerships are
symbolic of the social change Labour has brought about.”
Bryant was first elected Member of
Parliament for Rhondda in 2001.