Government must deliver on what it promised for civil partnerships

ALL newspaper columnists face the same dilemma: how much of ourselves should go into an article? Should we select a topic, adopt a lofty tone, present the arguments, and come to some clever conclusion by weighing up the evidence? Or should we just say, “This is what I believe”?

This column falls into the latter category. The debates in the Dáil on Labour’s revived Civil Unions Bill make for fascinating reading. The measure aims to legalise, recognise and regularise long-term gay and lesbian relationships. Very broadly, there is a cross-party consensus that “something must be done”.

In April last year, the Taoiseach posed as the champion of fairness. His remarks at the opening of the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network’s offices in Dublin were as plain as they were welcome: “The Government is unequivocally in favour of treating gay and lesbian people as fully equal citizens in our society. Giving effect to this principle in legislation is necessarily complex and challenging. Legislating for civil partnerships requires thinking through a host of related matters … This challenge, however, is one the Government is determined to meet. We are committed to legislating on this issue.”

Since then, the Government’s working group, chaired by Anne Colley, a solicitor and daughter of the late lamented Fianna Fáil minister George Colley, has reported. Although it examined and commented upon a number of options for unmarried heterosexual couples, it concluded that “the primary options for consideration for same-sex couples are marriage and full civil partnership”. It explicitly rejected more limited measures as failing to address equality and status issues.

That was the context in which last week’s debate took place. If a wry smile passed the lips of former Justice Minister Máire Geoghegan-Quinn when she read the debates, that was entirely understandable. Fianna Fáiler after Fianna Fáiler popped up to praise their former colleague, who is now ensconced in EU bureaucracy in Luxembourg.

In 1993, Geoghegan-Quinn piloted through the Oireachtas the decriminalisation of homosexuality. Dr Martin Mansergh — then a senior party adviser, now a TD for South Tipperary — rightly described it as “a model of radical legislative reform”. But, last week, having paid tribute to their departed colleague, some Government TDs then attempted to hollow out the Taoiseach’s unequivocal commitment.

Mansergh deserves to be singled out because he is normally a man of considerable scholarship and erudition. Precisely because he is a cut above the average — and because he is close to the Taoiseach — his contribution to the civil unions debate is worthy of scrutiny.

It was all going so well. He conceded this was an “extremely important” issue. He praised Geoghegan-Quinn. He accepted there was “clearly a need for reform”. And then he lost it. “There is a danger … that people will adopt a civil partnership that is in practice normal or non-existent purely to avail of the tax advantages,” he claimed. Leaving aside what constitutes “normal”, is it not the case that, as the law stands, there is nothing to stop a man and a woman contracting a marriage just because there is a few quid in it for them?

Would anyone voluntarily stand up in the public square and declare, “I’m a homosexual” — despised through most of history, the same class of person the Nazis sent to the camps alongside Jews — just because there was a tax break in it? The idea defies belief.

Astonishingly, Mansergh claimed he was speaking as a liberal, in the mould of former Irish Times editor Douglas Gageby. God preserve us from Fianna Fáil’s conservatives.

Not content with the slur about gays inherently being tax dodgers, Mansergh came out with the bizarre suggestion that legislating for civil partnerships would require teachers to “promote” homosexuality. The subtext was clear. One morning you will wave young Sean off to school and by the time he comes home, he will have been taught all manner of weird sexual practices.!

This drivel was all dressed up in seemingly thoughtful and considered language: “We need detailed, workable legislation that addresses all the issues and the wide variety of situations equitably.” But, when hardy comes to hardy, “the primacy of marriage under the Constitution should be maintained”.

Repeating ad infinitum the notion that somehow the rightly revered institution of Irish marriage is somehow “under attack” from the tiny gay and lesbian minority does not make it any more true.

Let’s be clear: I am not one of those counter-cultural types who believes marriage is legal servitude — far from it. No one with half a wit would undermine marriage. It provides a crucial anchor in the chaos of relationships, a mechanism for emotional stability, economic security and the healthy rearing of the next generation.

Governments the world over rig the law in its favour, not because they disparage other forms of relationship but because study after study shows marriage does us good. Married people are healthier, happier and live longer then single people. The statistics speak for themselves.

So society has every reason to extend legal advantages to those who choose the formal sanction of marriage over living together. They make a deeper commitment to one another and to society; in exchange, society extends certain benefits to them.

CIVIL partnership would offer gays and lesbians an equivalent deal to the one society has always offered heterosexuals: general social approval and specific legal advantages in exchange for a deeper and harder-to-extract-yourself-from commitment to another person. The financial implications arising from divorce would be the same, too.

The counter-argument — that civil partnership would subtly undermine the legitimacy of straight marriage — is based upon a fallacy. Civil partnership could only delegitimise straight marriage if it was a real alternative to it, which it clearly is not — unless you believe gays and lesbians should force themselves into fake heterosexual marriages at untold long-term cost to themselves, their partners and their families.

Thus, civil partnership would both avoid a lot of tortured families and create the possibility for many happier ones. It is not a denial of family values: it’s an extension of them. Given that gay relationships will always exist, what possible social goal is advanced by framing the law to encourage those relationships to be unfaithful, undeveloped and insecure?

Ironically, the institution of marriage is only endangered by those such as Martin Mansergh, who attempt to confuse long-term gay and lesbian relationships with all the other types of domestic partnership. If you extend a range of marriage-like benefits to heterosexuals who choose simply to ‘live together’, why would anyone choose marriage, with all its attendant responsibilities?

It falls to Justice Minister Brian Lenihan to face down the scaremongers, just as Máire Geoghegan-Quinn did. The Taoiseach promised civil partnerships, nothing less. He will be held to that solemn commitment.