In all conscience, I cannot approve of denying children a parent
FREEDOM of thought, conscience and religion is an accepted principle. It presumes reciprocal respect, or at least tolerance. It may also demand reciprocal co-operation, and this is where problems arise.
Should the same-sex mariage amendment be carried, the Tanaiste, Joan Burton, has said there will be no ‘conscience clause’ to allow anyone refuse goods and services to marrying gay couples. Bakers and florists have made headlines in Northern Ireland and the US for asserting freedom of conscience on this issue.
The Government’s move should not be a surprise, given that the whip is applied to votes of such moral sensitivity as abortion, and this sets us apart from other democratic parliaments. The TD who was mocked for saying that when he entered the Dail he left his conscience outside was ahead of his time.
Before considering how the denial of a conscience clause will play out after the referendum, there is the more immediate issue of freedom of expression in the debate beforehand.
There is considerable unease about the intolerance of, and invective towards, those who do not buy into the Government’s line. The ‘No’ campaigners are described in well-chosen phrases calculated to belittle them: “A group calling themselves Mothers and Fathers Matter” was the description by a prominent ‘Yes’ supporter.
It was a put-down before any comment was made. It masks the fact that Mothers and Fathers Matter has a nationwide membership and is the main organisation opposing the amendment.
Anne Ferris, TD, responding in this newspaper to the article I wrote last week, said I was like her own mother 40 years ago. The subtext is that opponents of the referendum are backward eccentrics who need to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
This disrespect does not do justice to the electorate, who deserve the ‘open and robust’ debate Colm O’Gorman called for when the referendum was announced. Expressions of ‘outright anger’ are not arguments.
Neither are sweeping, unsubstantiated denunciations like ‘outrageous’, ‘downright inaccurate’, and ‘mischievous’. This is just verbal mud-spattering in the hope some of it will stick. Courtroom hyperbole without the forensics.
If you write, as Anne Ferris does, that a reasoned argument “has no legitimate basis whatsoever,” you need to give the basis of your own claim. Rhetorical sabre-rattling won’t cut it with an astute electorate.
The issue that caused this verbal tirade was the potential constitutional right of gay couples to IVF and surrogacy. Irish feminists, among whom I venture Anne Ferris counts herself, do not seem to share the concerns of their European counterparts.
A European Parliament resolution, in 2011, described surrogacy as “ the exploitation of a woman’s reproductive organs.”
The very liberal European Women’s Lobby, in 2013, agreed to work against all types of surrogacy, because “in all cases there is a trade in human beings.”
Currently, feminist groups in Sweden (a country that has had same-sex marriage for over a decade) are campaigning against surrogacy, because, no matter how it is regulated, “it makes children commodities and women containers”.
If the amendment is carried, many parents will have ethical objections to books like Heather Has Two Moms and Harry Has Two Dads.
This is not because they want to shun any family type, or keep any child out of sight (single mothers and their children were cruelly treated in the past). It is most emphatically not about rejecting any person.
Rather, it is about rejecting the 21st century cruelty that deliberately denies a child a mother or a father, through surrogacy and IVF, and all that entails.
Yes, family realities are what they are. But other people should not be forced to tacitly or explicitly approve that which they hold to be a fundamental injustice to a child, and to human dignity itself.
Of course, a conscience clause needs to be carefully monitored. It cannot be exploited to allow discrimination on grounds of prejudice and bigotry.
However, if provision of goods and services makes one complicit with what is repugnant to one’s conscience, then there should be a right to refuse, for individuals at least, as is the case for medical personnel where abortion is concerned.
Then, if someone wanted inscribed on a cake a slogan that was offensive to a Christian, Muslim or humanist baker, they would not have the weight of law on their side.
There are questions that go beyond the provision of basic wedding services. We are assured that the referendum only concerns civil marriage and that religious marriage, which the State also recognises, will not be affected in any way.
If there is a conscience clause for religious registrars of marriage, why not for others? Why not for printers and bakers? The principle of equality would seem to require that a conscience clause should be for all or for none.
Looking even further to the future, there is a question around the freedom to speak of the value of mothers and fathers.
In the past, British prime minister David Cameron and US president Barack Obama, both supporters of same-sex marriage, have pointed to a link between fatherless families and social breakdown.
That seems politically incorrect in 2015. In 2008, childrens’ charity, Barnados, also a supporter of same-sex marriage, initiated the ‘Da Project’, to promote engagement between fathers and their children. That, too, would seem to fall foul of the PC agenda.
One wonders if any expression of preference for gender-balanced parenting will be completely off limits if the referendum is carried?
In the US, gay marriage is legal in 37 states, through court rulings and legislature decisions. Only three of those states, like us, had an opportunity to decide by popular vote.
Now, before the federal court makes same-sex marriage lawful across the US, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) is being rolled out.
21 states have already what amounts to a conscience clause, for religious believers. Of course, there are checks and balances to prevent abuse.
Something like the RFRA would be welcome here, to give reasonable balance to conflicting values and rights, as society grows more and more diverse and, in particular, to protect those who value the unique role of mothers and fathers and the value of family ties.
This is about rejecting the 21st century cruelty that denies a child a mother or a father, through surrogacy
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