McAleese accuses Catholic Church of hypocrisy over equality

The Catholic Church has been accused of hypocrisy over its opposition to marriage equality by former president Mary McAleese.

Making a highly personal, and deeply pointed intervention in the final days of the referendum campaign, the Catholic theologian and former president insisted that the Church’s stance was “ironic”.

Ms McAleese stressed that Church conceptions of marriage would not be impacted by a yes vote, as it was about extending civil marriage rights to same-sex couples, and that religious freedoms would remain.

“There is a huge irony here in the defence of heterosexual civil registry office marriage being mounted by the Catholic Church since the Catholic Church does not recognise as valid any such marriage that involves Catholics,” Ms McAleese said.

READ MORE: Marriage Equality Referendum: Answering key questions .

She criticised Catholic bishops for failing to mention in their strident anti-marriage equality campaign that the Church teaches that homosexual inclination is “objectively disordered”.

Speaking at an event hosted by the BeLonG To organisation, which offers support to young gay people, Ms McAleese used the example of her son Justin as to why the law needed to change.

“A yes vote costs the rest of us nothing,” she said. “A no vote costs our gay children everything. Why? Because differential treatment of homosexual citizens, by excluding them from secular civil marriage, undermines civic equality and permanently locks in inequality.

“I am grateful that my gay son grew up in a gay-friendly household.

“But we were not able to protect him from hostility outside our home and, like so many parents of gay children, we were worried sick about the manmade barriers we knew he would encounter, including the Constitutional barrier that would never let him marry the person he loved.

“No parent brings a child into the world to be a second-class citizen.”

Ms McAleese said she wished her son had not had to deal with being gay on his own for so long due to fears about how society would react. She said she would have liked to have hugged him, and reassured him about his future if she had known earlier.

Describing herself as a “devout Catholic”, Ms McAleese said that she had first advocated gay marriage in the 1970s, and that the institution of marriage was constantly evolving.

“The truth is that marriage is already one of the most rapidly evolving social institutions,” she said. “Not so long ago, for example, married women could not legally own their own property, they had to give up work on marriage, and they could be legally physically chastised or raped by their spouses.

“It is only in recent years that anything like true equality between spouses in heterosexual marriage has been established. Gay marriage will strengthen that equality between the spouses just as it will strengthen equality between citizens.”

The no campaign group Mothers and Fathers Matter (MFM) insisted Ms McAleese was wrong.

“President McAleese’s words remind us all of the wonderful president she was — empathetic, warm, and generous of spirit,” a MFM spokesperson said.

“While we understand President McAleese, we must respectfully and firmly disagree with her on this occasion. The president, like so many yes voters, is speaking from the best of intentions, but it is important that she and many others voting yes pause and consider this one last time before they radically change our understanding of the family.”

READ MORE: Marriage Equality Referendum: Answering key questions .