Again and again, the nettle of civil marriage has poked through to Lebanon's public sphere, and again and again, politicians have failed to grasp it. The past few weeks have been no exception. Calls for a large rally in Beirut yesterday afternoon in favour of civil marriage were merely the culmination of weeks of discussion, debate, activism - and a few insults.

The issue began when a Muslim couple became the first to wed in a civil ceremony. Nidal Darwish and Kholoud Sukkarieh went through an extended process of removing any reference to their religious denominations from official documentation.

That process is legal but tortuous, because the Lebanese state demands that religious sect is factored into every government interaction. At the end of that process, in November last year, the couple exploited a legal loophole dating back to the French Mandate, which allows them to marry in a civil ceremony - although official government recognition has not yet been forthcoming. [Link]