North leads way on gay rights with first civil partnership

IN the last hours before Shannon Sickels and Gráinne Close made history today, they sat in a Belfast nail bar sipping champagne with their feet soaking in warm soapy water.

Other customers wished them luck for a ceremony that will herald a new era of sexual empowerment in Britain. Then the two women stood up in Belfast City Hall at 10am yesterday morning to the strains of Dolly Parton’s Touch Your Woman, and made legal history as the first gay couple to have a full civil partnership ceremony in a register office.

As they stepped from their car, they had to dodge a protest by born-again Christians.