Telling it straight: It’s time to give gays marriage equality

CIVIL partnerships were always a first step, not a full stop, but it is remarkable the way public opinion has now swung so rapidly behind the move to gay-marriage equality.

The latest poll on the subject shows an overwhelming 73% back amending the Constitution to give same-sex couples the same rights as heterosexual ones.

While civil partnerships offer some guarantees for same-sex couples, such as stopping homophobic relatives barring lifelong partners from their loved one’s death bed, in practice it cements a status as second-class citizens within a society in which all should be equal.

The change to marriage equality is about the State and its responsibility to recognise its citizens as equals.

This is about people who want to have their lifelong emotional commitment to one another recognised by the State that they fund as taxpayers.

If South Africa can do it, there is no reason Ireland cannot follow Canada and Belgium, to name but two others, and let same-sex couples have the civil rights to which they are entitled.

Politicians here have shied away from the subject in a typically timid fashion as they fear anything ‘difficult,’ but the polls show the public is way ahead of them.

What this is certainly not about is God or the attitude of various religions.

And it’s not about the Bible — that tome can be quoted to ban rugby (touching pig skin), or to legitimise incest, or selling your daughter into slavery, if that’s what you want it to do.

And marriage is not about bearing children either, otherwise heterosexual couples who either cannot, or do not, want to have children would also be second class in the eyes of the State.

This is about ending discrimination.

Almost three in four people will vote for inclusion, social justice, and the need to atone for centuries of prejudice against gay people that led to the gas chambers in Nazi Germany, and Ireland continuing to criminalise gay men and lesbians until as shockingly recent as 1993.

Civil partnerships have the whiff of Alabama in the 1950s, as it’s like saying, ‘yes, black people can ride the bus, but they must know their place and always be aware they are the second-class passengers.’

Civil partnership was the equivalent of saying to mixed-race couples they should be grateful because they were finally being given some of the same rights as white couples.

But it is remarkable how quickly society has adjusted to civil partnerships, as most people, especially younger people, now marvel that it took so long for same-sex relationships to be officially recognised.

Soon, it being illegal for gay couples to marry will seem as ludicrous as the laws that existed in many US states up until the 1960s, including Virginia, banning interracial marriage.

However, the dramatic shift in public opinion once again leaves Enda Kenny looking like yesterday’s man, unable to cope with a society in transition, as he has been openly dismissive of marriage equality.

How different from his fellow ‘Tory’, British Premier David Cameron, who, though his personal record on gay rights has been patchy, and his party openly homophobic in recent times, has strong enough political emotional intelligence to sense when society is changing.

Hence, Cameron’s commitment to bringing in gay marriage to Britain and Northern Ireland later this year, announced in a landmark address to his party conference when he said: “Conservatives believe in the ties that bind us; that society is stronger when we make vows to each other and support each other.

“I don’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I am a Conservative.”

Conservatism claims that families are the foundations of society, and Mr Cameron, at any rate, is ready to be inclusive about families who happen to be headed by same-sex couples.

Another benefit of updating the Constitution to include marriage equality would mean that the rights of children in such family units would no longer be ignored, as they are by the civil-partnership compromise.

Labour in opposition tried to legislate for this with a marriage-equality bill that was voted down by the then Fianna Fáil-Green coalition, ahead of bringing in the civil partnership half-way-house option.

Labour rounded on the Greens for this as a cynical betrayal of their principles. They had dismissed civil partnership as an unacceptably shabby second-class compromise until that point.

So, it is now deeply ironic that Labour faces its own moment of decision, between principles and politicking while in Government, as the Socialist TD Clare Daly brings forward her bill to finally get the Oireachtas to legislate in accordance with the X Case Supreme Court abortion ruling.

Whatever one’s views on abortion, Daly is to be commended for making the Oireachtas face up to a moment of decision it has been ducking for 20 years.

And there is nothing in Daly’s bill at odds with Labour’s stance on the issue, but it’s odds-on that Labour — like the Greens they so savaged — will ditch their principles, hide behind the expert-group compromise they thrashed out with Kenny to keep the issue on the back burner, and vote down Daly’s bill.

The Greens sold out all their principles in the end and were rewarded for that by a wipe-out from voters — and Labour would do well to remember that warning from recent history.

But with the constitutional convention recommending on whether or not to go for a gay-marriage equality referendum within the next year, at least Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore has the chance to drag a deeply reluctant Fine Gael forward on that issue — a subject on which the public is already far more progressive than paralysed politicians.

Gay-marriage equality will go some way to promoting inclusion and combating prejudice — and in a society where teenagers who happen to be gay are now four times more likely to kill themselves than their straight counterparts, that can only be a good thing.