Children are the losers in civil partnership bill

IT seems to me the Civil Partnership Bill is a carbon copy of the strategy on divorce.

A minority party is naming its price for its support and this is being acceded to without regard to the effect on society. In divorce, the state accepted that marriage was only for as long as it lasted.

In the Civil Partnership Bill, the state is going further: it is saying marriage is whatever you want to make of it yourself. The price in both cases is being paid by a group hardly mentioned in divorce and not mentioned at all in the Civil Partnership Bill: children.

A major result of divorce has been that one in three births in Ireland is now without any commitment by one or both parents who brought those children into the world.

And, incidentally, did so without the children’s consent. They are deemed to be “out of wedlock”. Mary Kenny pointed this out, and she asks who is going to apologise to these children? In my view, the hidden effect on children will be exacerbated greatly if the Civil Partnership Bill is passed. The number of children who have been short-changed will rise, not fall. More apologies, but from whom?

In divorce, we have not, after 15 years, yet reached the magical figure of 80,000 “prisoners of the constitution”. While in same-sex unions, the numbers seeking “marriage” will be infinitesimally small, the real effect in both cases has been, and will be, borne by children.

This result is hard to explain. But, in my view, it is by far the most important aspect.

Donal O’Driscoll

Dargle Road

Blackrock

Co Dublin