We must put reason ahead of emotion in marriage referendum

While fully supporting the civil partnership arrangements that already provide same sex couples with very extensive legal security, I see the idea of homosexual “marriage” in quite a different light.

I have listened attentively to what the yes side has to say and their campaign has struck me as intellectually shallow and hollow in the extreme, consisting — in the absence of argument based on law and logic — of emotionally-laden, basically irrelevant buzz-words intended to make those who oppose them look mean and bad: ‘we are anti-equality and anti-love’.

The referendum is not about equality. All Irish citizens are already “equal before the law” (Article 40.1 of our Constitution) and the same marriage laws apply to all. The relevant question here is not whether heterosexual and homosexual unions are “equal” but whether they are the same — which is what the ‘yes’-side is really claiming — and so should be treated as if they were the same. It is clear that precisely with regard to what is dealt with in Art 41 of the Constitution — family as a natural unit: mother, father, their own children — heterosexual and homosexual unions could hardly be more different, and so there is no basis for changing the Constitution on the pretence that they are the same.