My partner and I had a Civil Partnership this summer. We stood up in front of friends and family and made vows to each other, exchanged rings, had a Celtic handfasting, and signed on the dotted line to declare that we are joined in law as well as in spirit. Afterwards we ate, drank and danced with those closest to us, all coming together to celebrate our relationship. We were able to do so because of the Civil Partnership Act 2004, which extends legal rights to same-sex couples, almost identical to those enjoyed by married mixed-sex couples. Such legal protections and rights were unimaginable to me as a teenager coming out in my home town in the early 1990s, when Section 28 still prevented ‘the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship’.