Fears about the traditional family unit are born of propaganda

A referendum on gay marriage won't pass easily even though it affects the happiness and security of thousands in our society, writes Fergus Finlay.

HAVE many friends who are in same-sex relationships. They’re among the warmest and most loving people I know. They also seem to me to be among the most innocent.

I met one such couple the other night. One of my daughters was holding a small dinner party to celebrate their engagement, and they told me they had set the date for their wedding: late next year.

“So, where are you getting married?” I asked them.

“Oh, here,” they said in unison. “As soon as the referendum is carried.”

I couldn’t resist asking what they were proposing to do to ensure it would be carried, and they looked at me as if I was an idiot. They would vote for it, they said, and they assumed I would, too.

Of course I’m going to vote for it. Why would you vote against something that holds out the hope of happiness and security for someone? But I came away with a sinking feeling.

I’ve spoken to other friends in the same-sex community, and I have formed the very strong impression that they all think the referendum allowing them to marry will be passed easily, simply because it’s the right thing to do.

But it won’t.

The Government has promised a referendum next year. But it will only be passed if everyone who believes in it goes out to fight for it. I know that opinion polls, right now, all predict a sizeable majority in favour of change. But by polling day, there will have been a bruising campaign, in which all sorts of fears will have been stoked up.

There’s never been a referendum in Ireland in which we voted for something simply because it was the right thing to do for other people.

We always have to be reassured, first, that it won’t be the wrong thing for us.

The children’s rights referendum was the last example. Even though a majority of people voted for it, nearly two years ago, it’s still caught up in the courts, awaiting the final judgement of the Supreme Court.

Everyone involved remembers how that referendum started off entirely non-contentious, but ended up with a much narrower majority in favour, while thousands of people stayed away from the polls because of the fear and confusion generated by the campaign.

To allow for the referendum, and to clear outstanding issues, the Government is about to publish a detailed Child and Family Relationships Bill. It has already been published, and extensively debated at Oireachtas committee level, in draft form.

It’s a bill that deals with a range of parenting issues that arise because of the new ways in which families are formed. Throughout the draft bill, the rights of children are described as paramount.

It’s a progressive and non-threatening piece of legislation, probably not perfect in every respect. But that doesn’t mean it has been universally welcomed.

A new organisation has been established to oppose the bill. Probably, their real purpose is to oppose the marriage referendum, when and if it happens, but for now their attention is focused on the draft Child and Family Relationships Bill.

This organisation is called Mothers and Fathers Matter. It’s headed up by a professor of banking, of all things, and, my goodness, it has trenchant views (not a great deal of analysis, just strong opinions).

On its website, it describes the bill as “a far-reaching and deliberate attack on a child’s right to have the love of a mother and a father, wherever possible”. According to them, the bill attacks the rights of the child by, among other things, allowing for a child to be deliberately deprived of a father or a mother, putting adults’ wishes before children’s rights, and “commodifying” children by allowing people to effectively ‘order’ them via the use of third-party eggs and sperm.

Most of all, they say, the bill badly undermines the special place of marriage in the Constitution.

The use of language like “deliberate” and “attack”, the notion that this legislation will deprive children of love — all of that is carefully chosen propaganda.

The bill seeks to recognise, and provide for, a number of existing realities — it doesn’t attack anything, nor force anyone to change the way they live their own lives.

I’ve been married a long time — it’s the most important relationship in my life.

My children matter to me more than anything else. I could never see myself living any other kind of life than that of a husband and father.

But I’m never going to feel less married just because my friends get the right to marry. I’m never going to feel less of a father just because someone who can’t be a parent in any other way is assisted to become one through medical means.

I find it impossible to understand how anyone could feel that only the traditional forms of marriage and parenthood are acceptable.

Mothers and Fathers Matter say there were set up (presumably they set themselves up) “to say exactly that, ‘mothers and fathers matter’. We support and promote a child’s right to a mum and a dad, wherever practicable. We believe that the Government’s new Children and Family Relationships Bill is unjust, because it says mothers and fathers don’t matter to children.”

There’s a logic to this. If you support the bill, you don’t support the right of a child to a mum and dad, wherever practicable. I don’t even know what the phrase “wherever practicable” means.

I do know that there are thousands of children, the children of loving families, who don’t have a mum and dad. But they have love, they have security, they have an opportunity to grow, they have a voice.

Of course, in the best of all possible worlds the old-fashioned idea of a family, with children gambolling on a well-trimmed lawn, dad smoking his pipe in the armchair and the smell of freshly-cooked apple pie wafting through the house, is what some aspire to.

But families aren’t like that anymore.

Some of the most loving families have been raised by a woman on her own, or by same-sex couples. Lone parents, in particular, face many challenges — the fact that they are at greatest risk of poverty being the main one — but that’s no reason to assert that they are depriving their children of a right to a second parent.

This battle will intensify as the referendum draws closer.

Just as happened in the past, we’ll be told to be afraid of the “deliberate” undermining of the family, and promised that if we leave things as they are everyone will be better off. It’s never been true in the past and it won’t be true the next time.

But the politics of fear are powerful. People who believe in change should recognise that, and get ready to fight for what they believe in.