Marriage is not a private affair so we should vow to do three things

MOST adults have done it. Some celebrities get thousands of euro for glossy colour pictures of themselves doing it. Irish people are now doing it later in life.

An increasing number have now done it for a second time.

The Pope is opposed to lesbians and gay men doing it. Getting married contrary to popular belief is actually as popular as ever in Ireland.

Amid all the silly season hype about celebrity weddings and gay unions the media has actually touched on a number of important issues about the nature and purpose of marriage in the last week. When the silly season is over and it proves possible to have a more rational debate on the topic, Irish lawmakers should do three things.

Firstly, they should separate the civil marriage ceremony from the religious ceremony.

Secondly, they should resist efforts to create some secondary sort of legal recognition for couples who co-habit but who do not want to marry.

Thirdly, they should ignore the Vatican dictate of last week and provide for a civil register of solemn unions between same-sex couples.

It is worth remembering that getting married is not a private act. Marriage is a public declaration of a private commitment in which two people seek the support and recognition of friends, community and society for the union into which they have entered. Getting married is of course a private decision, but it is also a significant and solemn public contract.

The way in which society and the legal system relates to two people changes when they get married. An entire range of legal rights and entitlements flow from marriage. It is precisely because of the legal significance attached to marriage that all societies no matter what their religious makeup have detailed laws about who can wed and how.

Most countries prohibit marriage to more than one person at a time, have a legal minimum age for marriage and prohibit marriages between two people who are within a certain degree of relation to each other.

Many countries also have minimum notice or cooling-off periods before two people can legally get married.

Our civil law now recognises that some marriages break down. Our laws and courts regulate separation after marriage, and make arrangements for children and property.

Unlike the Catholic Church, where one or both parties to a broken marriage wants the option of remarrying our laws facilitate that through divorce.

The regulation of marriage by the civil law is distinct and separate from the religious sacrament or ceremony. Peculiarly in Ireland there is still an overlap between the religious ceremony and the civil solemnisation of marriage. When he conducts a marriage in Ireland, a Catholic priest, for example, is not only an officer of the church but is also designated an officer of the state. He officiates at the religious marriage sacrament but he also solemnises and registers the marriage on behalf of the state.

In most other countries, even those with large Catholic communities, the law requires a distinct civil ceremony conducted by a state official which the couple must undergo irrespective of whether they want to have a religious wedding.

Now that the civil legal view of marriage diverges so much from that of the church view it is time for us here in Ireland to emphasise the distinct nature of the civil contract of marriage from the religious commitment by having two separate ceremonies.

Marriage is defined in the dictionary and in the bible as the condition of being husband and wife. However our civil law doesn't have to follow the dictionary or the biblical definition.

Last April the National Economic and Social Forum pointed out that when it was undertaking an overall consideration of the social, economic and equality challenges facing the lesbian and gay community it became increasingly clear that the absence of equal recognition on a legislative basis for same-sex couples was a substantial barrier to implementing equality. It called for the recognition of same-sex partnership with regard to parenting, inheritance, property, healthcare, pensions and immigration.

In a radio interview last week Senator David Norris suggested that a new type of legal recognition of co-habiting unwed couples short of actual marriage should be recognised in law. He and others argue that this legal recognition should be made available to all co-habiting couples, including same-sex couples. In addition to the difficulties which would arise in drawing the line on what is or isn't cohabiting, this new type of legally recognised partnership is unnecessary and discriminatory.

THERE is no need to create some kind of secondary category of marriage, or half-way house marriage just so that lesbians and gay men can be provided with these rights.

Irrespective of what the churches do and change there is likely to be very slow marriage in the civil legal sense should be made available to same-sex couples. The same rights which flow from it should be made available to those couples in return for their entering into a public solemn contract of union with each other which they envisage will be life-long. Frankly it is immaterial whether these solemn legal unions between same-sex couples are called marriages or not what is important is that they should be given all the legal rights which flow in our civil laws from marriage.

Similarly, it is not necessary to design some secondary category of legal partnership just so that cohabiting heterosexual couples can have rights similar to those enjoyed by couples who are married. Heterosexual couples in Ireland today have open to them a legal mechanism from which pensions, healthcare and inheritance rights flow it's called marriage.

If two partners decide to make a private long-term commitment to each other, but don't want to get married, then that is a matter for themselves and should be respected. However, they cannot expect public legal rights and recognition to flow from their private commitment.

If a heterosexual couple in this country wants to enjoy legal rights deriving from their union they are simply required to go down to a registry office, give three months' notice (even this can be reduced by court order) and as long as they can establish who they are and that they are not already married, they can, in front of a registrar and two witnesses, enter into a legal contract from which all the legal protections they require will flow.

They don't have to go through a religious ceremony if they don't want to.

Our considerations of marriage should not involve the imposition of any particular set of attitudes or beliefs on any couple. To each their own.

However our approach to marriage has also to be shaped by the need to balance society's requirement for legal order with the need of couples whether heterosexual or homosexual to have the public recognition and legal rights which flow from marriage.