Disenfranchised same-sex couples deserve the opportunity to marry

The strange thing is that you can do it without any qualifications.

You need qualifications to do almost anything else.

When the CAO computer threw a tantrum a couple of weeks back, Minister for Education Mary Hanafin nearly had to offer counselling to each of the students who couldn’t fill in the form that would let them go to a third-level college to get a degree.

Because they were panicked at the thought of not getting their degrees.

A degree now serves as the basic qualification for the humblest job.

For some jobs, of course, even a degree isn’t enough. The human resources people interview you to find your competencies and weaknesses and when you prove you’ve more of the former than of the latter, they then put you through psychometric testing. Or aptitude testing. Or both.

You even have to prove yourself acceptable to gyms.

A friend, last week, decided to get his act together, lose a few pounds, add extra muscle and generally become the kind of guy who is unchallenged by latex.

He pitched up at his local gym, money in hand, and was told they had to first find out if he was fit enough for them to make him fit.

A blood-pressure cuff was fastened around his arm, a happy young woman pumped it up, went white as a sheet and told him to go directly to hospital before he popped his clogs right there, since his blood pressure was something like 780 over 600. He spent the whole night in A&E because he’d failed the gym exam.

Gyms make you prove you are already healthy before they’ll let you get healthy on their premises. It’s odd. But you can see their point. They tend to err on the side of caution.

Just about the only thing you can do without special training or qualifications is get married.

The occasional parish priest may demand that, before he marries you, the two of you have to attend a pre-marriage course, but even then, there’s no exam at the end of the course. Attendance is enough.

All you need to join this pivotally important institution which so signally contributes to societal stability, is a good intention.

Get to the church, the synagogue, the mosque or the registry office on time, make your promises, sign your name, and you’re wedlocked.

Most people enter marriage the way they enter parenthood: filled with the joyful confidence of the pig-ignorant. Life then delivers realism, mortgages, babies, betrayals, let-downs, accidents, illnesses, fatness, baldness, wrinkles, in-laws, parent/teacher meetings and infuriating small habits.

For some, it delivers separation and divorce. For many, where marriage is good, it’s very, very good and passes on to the next generation an unmeasurable gain.

Even though it’s relatively easy to get married, people are doing it less and later, if at all.

Figures released in Britain last week indicate that rates of marriage in England and Wales have fallen to a record low, dropping 10% in one year.

It’s not just church marriages that are falling off, it’s civil marriages as well. The Church of England expressed concern about the trends.

“These figures are worrying,” a spokesman said, “because the Church teaches that marriage is the best option for couples to grow together in mutual support.”

Ironically, a large number of people who passionately agree with that statement aren’t — in this country — allowed to get married at all.

Gay people, who have been campaigning for the right to have their relationships recognised by the State last week, saw a Labour Party move in that direction kicked off the agenda.

Several couples who have been together for years, some of them for decades, sat in the visitors’ gallery in Leinster House, grimly unsurprised as the Civil Union Bill went nowhere and grievously offended by some of the political comments accompanying the process.

Those who ensured it went nowhere will have been encouraged by the Pope’s latest statement, in which His Holiness spoke out against a bill approved this month by the Italian government which grants rights to unwed and gay couples. (That bill now joins the Labour Party attempt in a Limbo of unlikelihood. Romano Prodi dropped it from the programme for Government he presented to his allies in his attempt to end the current crisis there and resume the reins of power).

Without trivialising an issue which has profound implications for individual lives and the public good, imagine if marriage were a radio programme shown by the JNLR figures to be steadily losing listenership.

Along comes a group of potential listeners who could improve the figures.

But the producers of the programme decide to reject a transmission modification which would let this group of would-be listeners access the show — a bit like tossing aside a life-belt and clinging warmly to an anchor.

The view that the inclusion of same-sex couples in marriage would shockingly taint the institution would be understandable in the very old and the very religious.

Except that it isn’t the very old or the very religious who are opposing marriage for gay people. For the most part, in fact, the opposition is not so much opposition as inertia: a sense of “leave it alone, would ye?”

Significantly, when probed, many people who don’t like the idea admit that they don’t mind the idea of civil unions for gay people that much. It’s adoption they worry about.

The reality, in this country right now, is that sizeable numbers of women who have had children in a failed marriage are now in a happy, stable, same-sex relationship. They’re raising the children together.

But the woman who isn’t the natural mother of the kids can’t do the simple things — like pick up a child from school if the child is unwell — that she could do if a legal union was in position.

That’s a real and present disadvantage to the children involved.

Similarly, right now, men who have been together for half their lives are frightened that, if one of them were to have a heart attack, the other will run into that chilling experience in the hospital where a hospital staff member looks up from the nurse’s station and asks “Are you a relative?”

The answer, in terms of human commitment, may be “yes, with bells on,” but in terms of civil rights, is “no”. The disenfranchisement is obvious.

Less obvious is the humiliation of a loved one. Less obvious is the devaluation of a relationship that has gone through the crucible of opposition and obstruction over many a long year.

Gay people who want to marry are trying to opt for permanence and for the rights — like pension rights — that come with marriage.

They’re not setting out to bring the institution of marriage into disrepute.

Rather the opposite: they believe in marriage and want to be part of something they believe is good for them and good for society. And for which there are no qualifications.

Other than gender.