Give sisters same rights as gay couple.

Byline: GEORGE TYNDALE

AFTER a lifetime of sharing the same home, sisters Joyce and Sybil Burden have been told that, legally, their relationship amounts to nothing.

This ruling comes from the Grand Chamber of the appeal court of the European Court of Human Rights.

Joyce, aged 90, and Sybil, 82, had claimed that they deserved at least the same rights as same sex couples who have taken out a Civil Partnership.

Which of course they do.

A ruling in their favour would have meant that when one of them died the other would not have to pay death duties on their family home in Marlborough, Wiltshire.

Now having to find an estimated pounds 50,000 will mean that the surviving sister will have to sell the house she has lived in since birth.

This is a shameful outcome which two judges disagreed with. But it is, of course, based on cold legality.

In moral terms, Joyce and Sybil are plainly and obviously right.

How can anyone dispute that sharing a home for 82 years and caring for elderly parents and aunts does not constitute a relationship of a value at least equal to that of two blokes who met in a nightclub last Thursday and decided to get "married" two days later?

The Wiltshire spinsters have demonstrated a lifetime of family commitment, loyalty and love. All their relationship lacks that Civil Partnerships have, apart from the backing of the law of course, is sexual acts which no doubt the sisters, like so many more of us, find revolting.

But they are now left with no alternative but to lobby MPs at Westminster in a bid to bring about a change to the British law. And of course they have no hope at all of achieving this.

Because that would involve Parliament admitting the truth about Civil Partnerships.

That they are actually just a case of any two adults living together and amount to nothing more than a meaningless sop to the clamour of the homosexual lobby.

CAPTION(S):

UNFAIR: sisters Joyce, 90, left, and Sybil Burden, 82