Brit Tory MP to enter civil partnership

Brit Tory MP to enter civil partnership

Alan Duncan, who has been in Parliament since 1992, will tie the knot
with James Dunseath, spokesman for London’s financial futures exchange,
this summer at the Westminster register office in London.

The couple met 14 months ago at a dinner party and Duncan, 50, asked
Dunseath, 39, to marry him this past Valentine’s Day as the couple
vacationed in Oman.

”You could not find two more conventional people to enter into a civil
partnership,” Duncan told local media.

Dunseath told The Daily Telegraph: ”Our friends say we are inseparable.
He may be a politician but he’s great fun. We both feel it’s so right
and we’re very lucky.”

Tory leader David Cameron said he was ”thrilled” to learn of the
couple’s engagement and plans to attend the ceremony.

In 2002, Duncan became the first Tory MP to publicly come out of the
closet.

”Living in disguise as a politician in the modern world simply isn’t an
option,” he said at the time. ”The Tory view has always been, ‘We don’t
mind, but don’t say.’ Well, that doesn’t work anymore. The only
realistic way to behave these days is to be absolutely honest and
upfront, however inconvenient that may be at first.”

In a new interview with the Telegraph on March 5, Duncan added: ”I knew
that one day I would have to say something, because I believed honesty
to be the best policy. But I wanted to do it when I was sufficiently
well-established as an MP for it not to be my only label thereafter. I
didn’t want to be known just as ‘the gay MP Alan Duncan.’ To me, I’m an
MP who happens to be gay.”

Duncan also noted: ”This is not a wedding. You really just go into the
register office and sign. There will be no Elton John-style stuff: no
white suits, no John Inman, no flouncing about.”

The United Kingdom’s Civil Partnership Act, which took effect in
December 2005, grants registered same-sex couples all rights and
obligations of marriage.