Marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex.
For the past few years gay people in Ireland have been able to avail of Civil Partnership affording them many of the same legal benefits as marriage. So why do we need this referendum? why not just enhance civil partnership if it's lacking and leave it at that? A rose by any other name and all that. This is one of the first arguments against Marriage Equality that came out since the debate started.
Well firstly it comes down to the difference between something being enshrined in the constitution versus being merely legislated for. Legislation can be changed by a future Parliament but the constitution can only be changed by the will of the people. I'm married, and that relationship has a protection and a recognition due to its place in the Irish constitution. When we give heterosexual couples the option of a particular relationship status but deny it to homosexual couples we discriminate, plain and simple. So please don't use "we already have civil partnerships" as a reason for voting no. If the constitution allowed only Catholics to marry, would you settle for civil partnerships for Protestants and everyone else? What if it was the other way around?
The next argument goes something like this "well, marriage has been this way for thousands of years, I have no problem with gay people, I just don't want to redefine marriage". This is nonsense, the nature of marriage has changed and evolved very much over the years. When we had a law that forbade married women to work in civil service it said something about how we viewed marriage, what it meant to be a married woman. But, thankfully, we have moved on from that, in other words we have reevaluated what the marriage relationship means. We also removed:
- the legal right of a man to rape his wife (1990)
- the constitutional ban on divorce (1995)
- the right to marry girls as young as twelve (this was technically legal up to 1972)
Think of those last 3 facts together and ask yourself is that a definition of marriage you'd be happy with? If not, then I presume you are thankful that it's been redefined.
Next up are arguments about children. This referendum is not actually about children, next.
Okay, lets talk about children for a bit. Today, whether you like it or not, there are children being brought up in families headed by same-sex couples. What this referendum will do is copper fasten their rights. Voting no will not auto-magically place all of those children in homes with their biological heterosexual parents. Nor will it do that for all of the children being raised by single parents, nor the step children, the foster children or the adopted children. The world isn't as neat as you might like it to be, voting no won't make it neater, but voting yes may just make some families out there feel a little more included.
While we are on the subject of children, let's talk about the gay children. First of all, the ones who grew up in the past 30 or 40 years. The ones who, when they were young, were told (by society at large and often by those nearest and dearest to them) that there was something deeply wrong with them, that they were, at best diseased, at worst they were in the same category as paedophiles and by law they were criminals. Spend a bit of time thinking what that must have been like, I can't really imagine. We have a chance to do something now to help heal that pain, not to merely say we tolerate you but to say we accept you as one and the same as us. Equal. Then there's the children of today, the gay children, are we really telling them that they too must grow up feeling like second class citizens? Are you willing to sit down with one of them and explain why you think that you can deprive him, deprive her, of their right, in the future, to have their relationship recognised under the constitution just as yours is?
Then there are the religious arguments. I understand that various churches and religions have their own understanding and definitions of human relationships, I respect their right to that as I respect and believe in the separation of church and state. No one is asking anyone or any church to change their beliefs, this is a civil issue. Just as you don't want people of other religions expecting you to conform to their standards please don't ask others to conform to yours. You know, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Finally, some people aren't really too bothered because it doesn't affect them. Maybe you are straight and so it won't affect your marriage plans, or maybe you are gay and don't ever want to get married yourself. To that I say this. When you bolster the rights of one you bolster the rights of all, when you diminish for one you diminish for all. We are all in one minority or other.
Vote yes
