Registration of Civil Partnerships, Same Sex Marriage: Consultation Analysis

Footnotes

1. Statistics can be sourced at: http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/statistics/theme/vital-events/general/bmd-preliminary/2011.html. Please note that figures for 2011 are currently provisional.

2. More information on the civil partnership arrangements for Scotland can be found at:
http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/regscot/registering-a-civil-partnership-in-scotland.html

3. More information on getting married in Scotland can be found at:
http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/regscot/getting-married-in-scotland/i-want-to-get-married-in-scotland-how-do-i-go-about-it.html

4. Statistics can be sourced at: http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/statistics/theme/vital-events/general/bmd-preliminary/2011.html. Please note that figures for 2011 are currently provisional.

5. Further information on the number of marriages in Scotland, including whether religious or civil, can be found in Tables 7.6 and 7.7 at: http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/statistics/theme/vital-events/general/ref-tables/2010/marriages-and-civil-partnerships.html Figures for the type of ceremony are not yet available for 2011.

6. Solemnise is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as to 'duly perform (a ceremony esp. of marriage)'.

7. A list of the organisations to which the paper was issued forms Annex B to this report and was also contained within the consultation paper, available at: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2011/09/05153328/0

8.An additional 67 blank postcards were received but contained insufficient information to be included

9. Contained within 47 separate petitions, all but one of which were opposed to the introduction of same sex marriage

10. The prepared letters took the form of a prepared statement that was made available for copying and submission with the addition of the required respondent information.

11. This applies primarily to Question 10, but also in some instances to Questions 1 and 11.

12. Information on the coding framework is given at paragraph 2.24.

13. Only a relatively small number of respondents submitted more than one response, with some of those that did so indicating that they were submitting a further response because of concerns that an earlier response might not have been received i.e. these were essentially replacement rather than duplicate responses. Overall, fewer than 100 responses were removed, either as having been replaced or as duplicates.

14. Since respondents either tended to be broadly in favour of or broadly opposed to the proposals, this effectively equated to around 1 in 25 or more of those broadly opposed raising a similar point, or around 1 in 25 or more of those broadly in favour raising a similar point.

15. These issues were not raised under any particular question. The use of terms referring to proportion (many, some etc.) have been used according to the proportion that commented anywhere within their submission relative to the number that commented at Question 1 (as the question with the highest comment rate) but have been drawn from answers made at all questions.

16. An area-based analysis based on address has not been undertaken since address does not necessarily indicate the geographical remit of the organisation and no information about the area covered and particularly whether Scotland only, the whole of the UK or England and Wales only was gathered through the Respondent Information Form.

17. For these purposes, group respondents were classified according to the address given on their Respondent Information Form

18. This information was taken from the respondent logging spreadsheet created by the Scottish Government.

19. Since respondents have chosen to give their views - and are therefore essentially a self-selecting sample - no further conclusions can or should be drawn as to this group's relationship to the whole Scottish population.

20. There were 31 responses for which it was not possible to identify a country of residence for the respondent.

21. 95% of those that gave a yes/no answer at both Questions 1 and 10 gave the same answer i.e. they answered 'yes, 'yes' or 'no', 'no'.

22. 'Religious civil partnership' is used throughout this report to refer to proposed legislative changes to allow civil partnerships to be registered through a religious ceremony.

23. There was no basis for concluding that respondents intended their further comments to apply to civil partnership and the clear analytical routines being followed did not allow for meaning to be inferred.

24. One of the amended forms issued had an amalgamated version of questions 5 and 11. Most of those that commented at this amalgamated question made comments that related specifically to same sex marriage and hence the analysis (both quantitative and qualitative) has been included at Question 11.

25. A cross-tabulation of responses at Question 9 with overall support for or opposition to the introduction of religious civil partnership (as expressed at Question 1) is presented within Annex F.

26. The majority of those that responded through a form or prepared letter and who were also resident in Scotland were in favour of the introduction of same sex marriage.

27. There were also many respondents who did not make a specific reference to their Christian faith at Question 10 but did elsewhere within their response.

28. The European Convention on Human Rights is available at:
http://www.echr.coe.int/NR/rdonlyres/D5CC24A7-DC13-4318-B457-5C9014916D7A/0/CONVENTION_ENG_WEB.pdf

29. A cross-tabulation of responses at Question 12 with overall support for or opposition to the introduction of same sex marriage (as expressed at Question 10) is presented within Annex F.

30. A cross-tabulation of responses at Question 13 with overall support for or opposition to the introduction of same sex marriage (as expressed at Question 10) is presented within Annex F.