Marriage equality: Why I won’t be saying ‘I do’ to gay marriage
SUPPORTERS of the redefinition of marriage say the issue is straightforward ‘equality’ for gay people and acceptance in mainstream society. These ‘yes’ supporters define the issue in terms of love. Who could disagree with the right to equality, the freedom to express love in the language and ritual of marriage?
If you can persuade the electorate that you are championing love and equality, then your opponents need very good arguments indeed. It must be shown that those arguments are also grounded in love and equality.
This cannot be done in soundbites and slogans, but onlyin a mature conversation with the electorate.
It does the electorate a great disservice to shut out concerns about unintended consequences of the legislation. These concerns touch on love and equality. It is not scaremongering to point to the consequences in other jurisdictions of redefined marriage and parenthood.
We have the privilege of a vote in the matter. If the referendum is passed, we would be the first country in which the public voted for same-sex marriage. The British and French governments legislated for same-sex marriage without an electoral mandate.
Germany does not have same-sex marriage, but, like Ireland, legally supports same-sex couples through civil partnership.
The polls suggest that more than 25% of the electorate is opposed to redefining marriage. Yet, the ‘No’ perspective has not been receiving coverage proportionate to its support in opinion polls.
The Oireachtas and the media are out of step with the electorate, and the Oireachtas is more culpable since our representational system is intended to ensure balance.
The lack of fairness in the media shows little of the values of ‘equality’ and ‘diversity’ they are happy to endorse when they are serving interests with which they agree.
Opponents of marriage redefinition see the issue in terms of equality and love, too. However, their focus is on children.
They do not accept the spin that the referendum is only about extending the right of marriage to a small number of people and that nobody else will be affected.
The Family and Relationships Bill (F&R Bill) was rushed through the Oireachtas ahead of the referendum to set clear water between children and family rights, on the one hand, and marriage rights, on the other.
It is the article on the family (Article 41) that we are being asked to amend. Marriage is contained within that article, as “the institution upon which the family is founded”.
Therefore, the right to marry also includes the right to found a family.
For a lesbian couple, this involves a sperm donor. The F&R bill sets out a legal framework for this to happen. It means that the child born in this way will be the child of both ‘intending parents’. The male genetic parent will, in the words of the bill, ‘... not be a parent’. Parenthood is already redefined.
If the Constitution is changed, then the bill and the Constitution will dovetail. However, with the Constitution as it now stands, this bill is wide open to challenge.
How can a law permit the deliberate denial to a child of a parent and genetic identity, when the Constitution upholds the family as the primary social unit ‘antecedent to law’ and pledges to ‘protect (it) from attack’ ?
Gay parenting is more complicated. In addition to egg donation, which is more ethically problematic, a surrogate is also required.
The Government conveniently kept surrogacy out of the F&R bill. While we are told that the reprehensible business of commercial surrogacy will not be allowed, there are concerns around altruistic surrogacy.
Look at jurisdictions where this is happening. In the UK, a mother has given birth to the child of her gay son. A retail celebrity, called Mary Portas, is to become the legal parent of her brother’s genetic child, with her lesbian spouse.
There is no need to sketch out the identity confusion for children born into such circumstances: your grandmother is also your birth mother and your first-cousins-in-law your genetic half-siblings.
Such scenarios will create conflicts of loyalty and bonding. Surrogacy legislation may eventually be brought to government by Leo Varadkar, who, in 2008, speaking of adoption, said “a child’s right to a mother and father comes before the right of two men to have a child or two women to have a child.”
Surrogacy and gamete donation cannot be challenged if the Constitution is amended. Not alone that, but since the right to marry and have a family go in tandem, people who seek to become parents in this way will look to the State for help to do so.
A number of TDs have proposed that DAHR come within the remit of the public health service.
It is true that heterosexual couples may also use surrogacy, but in almost all cases the genetic material is the couples’ own, so the child has its own biological mother and father.
Nevertheless, ethical issues around surrogacy don’t change just because of the sexual orientation of the people involved.
If this referendum passes, its impact can be guessed. There was a kerfuffle around the fashion designers Dolce and Gabbana, whose mere expression of support for the traditional family sparked off calls for a boycott of their goods. That is ominous.
Other straws in the wind include the forced resignation of Brendan Eich, of Mozilla, for expressing similar views to D+G, and the ‘retraining’ ordered for UK magistrate, Richard Page, for saying what Varadkar said in 2008.
This amendment, should it pass, will also affect the moral education of children. In the US, children in school are read books with titles like King and King and Dad, Papa and Me, so as to normalise the new family models. This is also now happening in the UK.
LGBT Noise, in Ireland, have asked that creches be supplied with similar books here. Very young children just grasp that mothers and fathers come in the singular, unlike aunts and grandparents.
Telling them about two-Mom families or two-Dad families will soon lead to questions and answers about the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ of donors and surrogates.
What of the exclusion many gay people feel because marriage is not open to them?
In the context of the current emphasis on cultural diversity and the positive profile gay people enjoy in Ireland, it is hard to see how the denial of family and parenting rights grounded on biological difference can undermine their human dignity.
Civil partnership allows gay people to say ‘I do’ and celebrate their commitment in a way that mirrors civil marriage.
There are far weightier reasons, grounded on love and equality, for keeping marriage as it is than for changing it.
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