Love is often regarded as a matter for the heart, but those in long-term relationships soon come to realise that behind every happy liaison lie boring but essential agreements over property and finance.

Sadly, some of the bitterest and most expensive legal wrangles occur when the love relationship breaks down and hard-headed financial considerations take over.

Whether a person is heterosexual or homosexual, he or she is a human being entitled to the same rights as anyone else.

However, because of the shorthand of modern mass communication, these new legal relationships are also being referred to as 'gay weddings,' as if these were to be regarded in the same category as other marriages.

Northern Ireland will host its first of these same-sex ceremonies on December 19, and there is sure to be a large media presence to record what will be - whether you like it or not - an historic occasion.

There may well be photograph captions and headlines referring to 'gay weddings,' but the term does not offend me. Relationships can be difficult to sustain and invigorate, and I never believe those who tell me that they have been married for 40 years "without a cross word." If there have been no cross words, someone has been keeping his or her mouth diplomatically shut.

However, it is important to set the record straight about the legalising of same-sex relationships, if only to underline that in the eyes of the Church a marriage is a lifelong relationship between a man and a woman.

Earlier this week Archbishop Robin Eames, whom I met at an important conference he was hosting on child poverty, took time off to underline for me the Church's current teaching in the light of the new legislation.

He said: "We recognise that it is an effort to recognise equality but we do not change, nor have we changed, our teaching that Christian marriage is between one man and one woman for life.

"We deplore the confused state that is arising in society where the word 'marriage' is being used for situations which do not represent the Christian view of marriage."

It is the vexed question of a Church blessing on same-sex relationships that has led to the virtual schism in the world-wide Anglican Communion and which Archbishop Eames and others have been desperately trying to avoid.

This arose from the Episcopal Church in Canada affording blessings to same-sex relationships, and the election of the actively-homosexual Bishop Gene Robinson by the Episcopal Church in the USA.

Incidentally, an American woman minister wrote to me recently to point out that I was wrong in claiming that Robinson was "appointed" and not "elected" - or was it the other way round?

This was a typical Anglican fudge to divert attention from the fact that the Americans forged ahead with the Robinson fracas despite the pleadings of many senior Anglicans, including Archbishop Rowan Williams, not to do so. American imperialism is not confined to military matters alone.

The row within the Anglican Communion is far from over, and it might become much worse before the differences are resolved - if they ever can be. At least the Anglicans are trying to grapple with the problem, whereas other Churches are behaving as if the problem did not exist.

The Roman Catholics are holding to their usual hardline opposition to same-sex relationships, though Pope Benedict XVI was rather more conciliatory than expected in his recent comments about homosexuality and vocations for the priesthood.

The new legislation affording legal equality in same-sex relationships will, if anything, increase the pressure on the Churches to deal with these situations in a caring, yet theologically sound, way. The prospect of 'gay weddings' is now with us, but a same-sex blessing by any of our Churches is still a far distant prospect, if ever.

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