Gay couples in civil partnerships still face discrimination, campaigners for same-sex marriage have told MSPs.
Tim Hopkins, director of the Equality Network, said its research found that more than half of gay couples who enter a civil partnership complain that they are not treated the same as mixed-sex married couples.
For that reason, legalising same-sex marriage would “genuinely reduce stigma and discrimination”, he told MSPs on Holyrood’s Equal Opportunities Committee.
The committee is scrutinising Scottish Government proposals to give gay couples the right to marry.
Ministers published the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Scotland) Bill in June while at the same time launching a review of whether civil partnerships, only available to gay couples, should be open to mixed-sex couples.
Mr Hopkins told MSPs that marriage is the “last big area in which the law still discriminates against LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) people”.
He said: “This Bill is about love. Marriage is about love. If you speak to most married couples and ask them what their marriage is about, it’s about love, it’s about commitment to each other. If they have children, it’s about their family.
“All of those things apply to same-sex couples as well.”
Marriage is perceived as the “gold standard for relationships” which could leave gay people facing “practical discrimination”.
Mr Hopkins said: “People have been quite distressed by the fact that, for example, they go into the bank and the bank doesn’t understand what civil partnership is. So the bank has a form to fill in and it has boxes for marriage but it doesn’t have boxes for civil partnership. This kind of thing is still quite common.
“We did a survey of 103 people in civil partnerships living in Scotland and 58% reported that they hadn’t received the same respect or the same treatment as married couples.
“People have said to us, ‘it’s not a real marriage is it?’ We’ve heard of hospitals where people have been turned away as next of kin because the hospitals have not understood what civil partnership is.
“One of the effects of introducing same-sex marriage will be to make that less likely to happen. I think it will genuinely reduce stigma and discrimination that people face in society.”
Colin Macfarlane, director of Stonewall Scotland, said that when civil partnerships were brought in his organisation “hoped that those distinctions between gay people and straight people would be eroded”.
But he said: “Hard evidence shows that, sadly, since 2005 when civil partnerships were introduced, that has not been the case.
“What this Bill for us does is make gay people equal in the eyes of the law.”