Gay Marraige?

I’m almost afraid to start writing. The first thing you notice about the ‘gay marriage debate’ is that it involves a viper’s nest of phrases, offensive terms, insulting words, politically incorrect language, legal jargon and oppressive sentiments. Suddenly the difference between marriages, civil unions, religious unions and legal unions become all important. Semanticists and pedants are busily having a field day.

So let’s boil it down to the utterly simple. In Ireland, an arguably liberal society, gay men and women, as consenting adults, cannot have their love for each other acknowledged by the state, the majority church, or the legal system. In this writers opinion this is a disgrace.

Ireland is one of the only countries in Europe not to give any recognition to same sex couples. As a country that has made a point of jumping on the anti-George Bush, anti-America bandwagon, we now appear to take great pleasure in emulating his medieval policies which try to prevent same sex couples receiving any recognition as a union in the United States.

However strongly you feel about this, one way or the other, there isn’t a huge amount of use in just shouting and screaming about it. Let’s deal with some of the traditional arguments that are regularly made against the idea of gay marriage.

It’s un-natural!
Many people take ‘Route 1’ and just maintain that gay marriage, and indeed being gay, is not what nature intended and is an offence to natural law. This argument is made despite the fact that gay men and women have been present right down through history. ‘Being gay’ has been a feature of human kind for as long as ‘being straight’ has. Just because it’s the minority does not preclude it form being natural. Furthermore, since when did we suddenly get so concerned about things being natural or not, was it as we bit happily into our apple (having first washed it to get rid of the pesticides) or was it as we picked up our plastic pens to formulate some bigoted arguments?

It will undermine and corrupt the age old institution of marriage
Some people, including George Bush, argue that the institution of marriage that has existed for millennia will be destroyed by the introduction of gay marriage. According to this line of argument the word marriage has always meant a union between a man and a woman and this should not be changed. Would these people also argue that we should revert to a time when marriage only meant a union between a white man and a white woman or a black man and black women…but not a mixture? Looking to history in search of lessons for the future is a good idea, dragging old and discriminatory ideas with us from the past is not.

Gay Marriage is not supported by major religions
Many religious prohibitions or calls for action are recognised as dubious in the extreme. The Catholic Church still condemns the use of condoms in the Aids ravaged regions of Africa and elsewhere. There is no reason not to take the beliefs of one particular church and follow them in your personal life. However those beliefs should not be used in the decision-making processes of a state.

Gay Marriage will not produce children
Proponents of the ‘its not natural’ school of thought offer up the fact that a gay couple cannot have any children as a defence of their argument. Denying the opportunity of marriage to people on this basis is very flawed. Taken to its conclusion everyone would have to have a fertility test before they married, ‘Sorry Sir, those sperm are not up to scratch, far too lazy for our liking, I’m afraid you just can’t marry’. The ridiculousness of this does not have to be further pointed out.

The list of arguments goes on and on, some idiotic and some quite pertinent but none that serve to justify what is an unambiguously discriminatory practice in this country, denying gay men and women the right to marry.

This discrimination does not just exist in the abstract. It has serious manifestations in the ‘real world’ of day-to-day living. Under Irish tax law it is considerably more beneficial to be paying tax as a married couple than as two single people. The Revenue Commissioners will not recognise the union between the couple and therefore will not grant them the same tax breaks as would be granted to a legal marriage.

The problem of legal recognition does not only affect tax. In the event of one partner dying the lack of a legal link can often leave the remaining partner in long and drawn out inheritance battles with the family of the deceased. Heterosexual married couples take for granted the fact that if one dies all their joint property and finances will be left in the control of the widow or widower unless stated otherwise in a Will. This security does not exist in the case of gay couples, regardless of how long they have been living together.

The effect of this discrimination spreads into all aspect of life in a society that has been built on the narrow-minded view that marriage can only occur between a man and a woman. It is time to end this discrimination.