From the Times o' London report on the U.K.'s first gay "civil partnership":

BELFAST scored a first yesterday — but delivered it with the unmistakable imprimatur of Northern Ireland — when a lesbian couple became the United Kingdom’s first participants in a civil partnership ceremony as the native Old Testament tendency howled its dismay.
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Northern Ireland was first because the registration period is shorter. Henry Kane and Christopher Flanagan, who arrived at City Hall in a pink stretch limousine shortly after Ms Sickels and Ms Close departed, became the first male gay couple to form a civil partnership.

But Northern Ireland’s fundamentalist streak ensured that the “Save Ulster from Sodomy” brigade — mostly members of the Rev Ian Paisley’s Free Presbyterian Church — were outside singing hymns and hurling abuse such as “sodomy is a sin”, “you’re going to Hell” and “filth, filth, filth”.

Happily for the couple on their big day a counter-demonstration soon formed, with humour as its main weapon. Two satirical interlopers infiltrated the anti-gay ranks wearing garish sports jackets and toothbrush moustaches but no trousers, carrying their own placards as an antidote to the religious tracts being paraded in Donegall Square.

These read “Bring back slavery” and “Earth is flat”. There was so much laughter that even the moral indignation of the Christian fundamentalists seemed on the verge of giggles. At times it seemed that the excitement generated by the first occasion on which a same-sex couple could legally commit themselves to one another would descend into a punch-up. That it did not perhaps speaks volumes about how much this once dourly Presbyterian city, where playground swings used to be chained up on Sundays, has changed.
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But among the guests Brenda Murphy and partner Nuala Quiery decided they were not going to be intimidated and they proudly joined friends and family through the front entrance. “You need to repent, love,” cried James Dowson, of the Christian Reform Foundation, who mistook Ms Murphy and her friend as the happy couple. “You are marrying this other lady, and that’s a sin.”

“You’d be so lucky to have this lady, mate,” she replied.