Marriage IS a religious thing, always have been. I’m all for equal rights, but if you want to get ‘married’ then you do so in a church, otherwise you have a civil partnership or whatever.

Define religion?

Define church?

There is more than one religion, more than one “church”.

my dad and my step mother got married by a civil registrar in a hotel last year…how was that religious?

Mick k: marriage might have begun as a religious thing but it most definitely is a legal thing now. That’s why people can be “married” in civil registries (not civil partnershipped). Marriage carries a ridiculous number of legal consequences in terms of constitutional protection, tax treatment, etc. etc. The word marriage can refer to the religious of legal contract. We’re talking about the legal one.

I love how there are all these people bleating on about how marriage is religious and they’re so small minded as to think that because THEIR religion doesn’t allow LGBT couples to marry, none do.

For example, my religion does. Why should we not be able to allow LGBT couples to marry in our church if that is one of our beliefs? I didn’t realise freedom of religion in Ireland meant freedom to be Catholic.

Agree with you 100% Niall. This is the way it’s done in most countries anyway.

Yep, and it if it’s all about procreation, maybe couples should only have a “provisional marriage” until such time as they produce a child. That should satisfy all those quaking in their boots about the unspecified threat to the institution of marriage posed by providing equality of access to civil marriage for same-sex couples.

Well, not the religions which discriminate against them. But there are several religions who welcome marriage between same sex couples (just not the majority religion in Ireland!) and would love to be able to offer a church wedding to members.

Very good article….real Ireland hadn’t spoken yet

It really has absolutely nothing to do with the Roman Catholic Church.
Gay people don’t want to get married in a Roman Catholic Church that says homosexuality is a disorder.

Marriage is defined as between a man and a woman, so its not an argument of equality its an argument of reformation.

He’s right, let’s get the dictionary people in here!

Words change in definition every day and society remains.

Ruaidhrí, have you considered the concept of evolution? Mankind, society, politics, civil rights, religion, dictionaries… they are all subject to it.

Yes, marriage has never changed over time. Which is why men can still marry multiple women, own their wives and can legally rape and beat them.

There’s a list of 28 types of “Prohibited Degrees of Kindred and Affinity”, so you’re wrong to say that it’ll mean “equality/equal opportunity to marry for all citizens”.
It will not.

It means the opportunity for current laws on marriage to apply to all citizens. It means gay people can’t marry a gay cousin, straight people still won’t e allowed marry a fourteen year old, women still won’t be allowed have five husbands and men still won’t e allowed to marry furniture and animals.

Literally the only parameter we want changed is that the person you’re marrying doesn’t have to be of the opposite sex.

Currently gay people can’t marry the person they love. Straight people can (within the above mentioned limitations). We give the right to marry to gay people and they’ll abide by the above limitations.

Those limitations are in place to prevent genetic disease, misogyny, tax fraud, forced marriage etc. Why is the one about the gender of your partner included?

Well, some of the degrees of the affinity are for ridiculous reasons. Which is why some have been rejected by the ECHR (marrying relatives by marriage.) And if someone wants to make a reasonable case as to why they should be able to marry a brother in law, I’m more than happy to have a listen to their argument (as are the courts.)

You’re confusing Catholic law with Irish law. They’re not supposed to be the same thing anymore.

If two men or two women can marry, why not a brother and sister? If it’s a personal matter who we fall in love with, there can be no limitations. And if there is a worry about genetic issues, there’s always a ready supply of babies waiting to be adopted, isn’t there?

Hey, again, if they make the argument, I’m willing to listen. But it’s not the current debate we’re having. The current law would only recognise non related, consenting adults. Not really a big deal.

Homosexual marriage isn’t a right. Marriage is a right. And in order to deny a right to someone, you need a good reason to. There is absolutely none with marriage between two people of the same gender. Animal marriage isn’t between two consenting individuals, not is inanimate objects. I think you could make a decent case for someone being able to freely and knowingly enter into a polygamous marriage, and I’d be happy to listen to anyone who wants to try to convince me of it.

If all you have is the slippery slope argument, you’ve already lost.

Obvious troll is obvious.
Employers DO have the option of employing those who will provide the highest quality of work, regardless of their gender.

Personally, I wouldn’t have a problem with a brother and sister (or any 2 people) getting married (in order to benefit from the benefits that marriage bestows).
I do think that there might be scientific evidence that if they were to have biological children together, those children would be handicapped.

Two male/female non-gay friends that live together can already get married. Being married doesn’t force people to have sex with each other. I’d like to hear stories of the Gardai ensuring that marriages have been consummated.

Animals and inanimate objects can’t consent to marriage so that is a moot point.

So marriage can be anything you want it to be? That makes sense. as once you believe that marriage isn’t special to a man and a woman, you can’t discriminate without seeming elitist. So, in reality, no relationship combination could be ruled out. Seems like a very radical change.

Ttable Whey, what’s a troll? Someone who has an opposing view?

ah, ye olde “thin edge of the wedge” argument ……..

the last bastion of a failed argument.

Adrian, I am relaying a genuine concern people have. Can you not empathise with such a concern?

not really, because i simply do not see this as a religious issue. We have separation of religion and state (begrudgingly to a lot) and as such we need to define civil agreements. Civil marriage between two homosexual persons, bestowing the same rights and entitlements as two hetrosexual civil married couples is a no brainer to me. You are asking for me to to be sympathetic to a ‘perceived’ threat to a religious belief when there is no mention at all anywhere of any religious involvement in this proposed change to legislation. We have freedom in this country to practise religion, its a protected civil right. So the argument you put above seems to try to add a bias of one civil right of one person over another…. that is plain discrimination.

So you do not see that understanding the perspective of one’s opponent in a debate is key to coming to any sort of agreement or accomodation and ultimately to the resolution of the disagreement?

Incidentally you seem to have confused empathise with sympathise. That may be fundamental. The point is that one can understand the perspective of one’s opponent while not actually agreeing with them. It seems to be swiftly becoming a lost art.

It’s very easy to specify in law that state registrars have no choice to discriminate but other organisations licensed to perform marriages are free to follow their own beliefs. Non-practicing Catholics can even now have a hard time getting married in a church, they have to at least show their face for a few Sundays and do a course. Write into the law that religious and humanist etc organisations have their own rules but not impose those rules on the rest of us, let’s not have the state discriminate on their behalf.

Well, while that may be a concern, it does seem a bit putting the cart before the horse. Would that not be a debate to have if anyone actually does try to bring in that kind of legislation?

Possible future violation of your rights shouldn’t trump the very real current violation of someone else’s.

@ damocles.

no. as i have already stated i do not see “religion” as having any hand, act or part in whether civil marriage should be allowed in a secular society. The church are not the opponent in this debate. To bring religion into it is a seriously misguided attempt to derail a common sense debate as to whether civil authorities in Ireland should legislate for same sex marriage, which would bestow the same civil rights and entitlements as currently exists.

THAT is the debate here.

Making assumptions about perceived threats to others is not how you debate a point.

If you’re getting married, it’s to be the happiest day of your life. No one who’s faced homophobic discrimination will want to be married in a homophobic environment. I’m not saying all priests are homophobes and I’m sure many Irish RC priests would be happy to marry a gay couple. I just don’t think the majority of gays would want anything to do with the RCC and it’s bigotry.

How do you spin denying equality to make it a positive thing? Even the “arguments” put forward by proponents of keeping marriage exclusively for heterosexual couples tend to the negative: damage to the traditional family (how?), negatively changing the nature of your own marriage (is it only special if you get to exclude people?), potential bullying of children of such families (because we should all be normal and that way bullies can’t single us out, and obviously there are no such children already)…if you can spin inequality as a good thing, rather than trying to scaremonger marriage equality as a harbinger of some societal destruction good luck to you, until then, get used to the negative press

In the heading to her essay in MIchael Cook’s book “Same Sex Marriage – Dangers, Difficulties and Deceptions”, Margaret Sommerville writes
“university life has turned toxic when unpopular opinions are reviled, stigmatized and silenced”
The book, which I accessed through the link on PJ Scully’s post above, presents cogent arguments against same sex marriage, mainly to do with the wellbeing and rights of children, if you’d care to look.
That many of these cogent arguments are not presented on this site might be an indicator of the level of revulsion, stigmatization and silencing of people like myself who hold an opposing view to the majority. You yourself I believe are one of the people who engage in this behaviour.

If the arguments are so strong, present them. I promise I won’t accuse you of lecturing. But mindful that this promise won’t be reciprocated I won’t point to the several studies which have shown that two mothers can provide the best home environments, I’ll just mention that they exist and you can do your own homework.

By the way, I didn’t silence you, I engaged with you honestly, I brought up several points, some of which you agreed with, and then you got cross, threw your toys out of the pram and had a bit of a tantrum. When I pointed out that your point of view was based on childish generalisations and stereotypes, as well as scapegoating gay people for the sexualisation of the youth you had no further reply.

@Paul

“When Activism Masquerades as Science:
Potential Consequences of Recent APA Resolutions
By A. Dean Byrd, Ph. D., MBA, MPH

The committee members were hardly an unbiased group!

The APA Committee supported their resolution on homosexual parenting by citing the research of Golombok, Spencer and Rutter as well as Golombok and Tasker. Nowhere did they acknowledge the methodological flaws or the unreported differences. For example, Williams (2000), in his re-analysis of the data of Golomobok, Spencer, and Rutter (1983) and the Golomobok and Tasker (1996) research found a significant number of children to either have considered engaging in a homosexual relationship, or already engaged in a homosexual relationship. There were also significant, but left unreported, differences in self-esteem between children of homosexual and heterosexual parents, as well as significant but unreported differences in social and emotional difficulties experienced by children of homosexual parents.”

Before going any further, can we then agree to omit any studies carried out under the umbrella of the APA?
It seems to be a very biased organization in favour of ssm.

Can we

@Paul

The full article

http://narth.com/docs/masquerades.html

@Paul

“No scientific organization can provide any resolution or policy statement based on scientific research that is tainted, flawed and inconclusive without breaching the trust of the general public. For APA to retain its credibility as a scientific organization, science must be separated from activism.”

I’m surprised you’re back, I thought I’d silenced, marginalised, belittled etc you so you wouldn’t be back -a complaint particularly ironic coming from someone who cheered the censoring and banning of “propaganda” for the “gay agenda”, i.e. parades, gay characters in movies, soaps, reality TV, dating shows and any other types of inclusion.

I’ll happily agree to discount any research found to be flawed which was carried out by people with a clear bias, would you agree to the same? Obviously lots of Christians would fall into the category ‘clearly biased’ too, but does it count as bias if they agree with you?

Some more reading for you, and I’m still waiting for the cogent points you mentioned earlier

http://www.livescience.com/17913-advantages-gay-parents.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/6574238/Lesbians-make-better-parents-says-senior-parenting-official.html#disqus_thread

Yes, I agree to discount any literature that’s clearly biased, Christian or otherwise.

Your attempts to revile, silence and mock me have already failed, but perhaps you can adopt another tone in future? You do seem rather patronizing.

@Paul

“Ann Widdecombe, MP for Maidstone and the Weald, said: “This contradicts every other government study that has ever been done. These studies, which are quoted so often by the Government and the opposition, clearly show that children do better when they have both a mother and a father figure.”

How many studies did Stephen Scott cite that weren’t his, apart from Birkbeck and Clarke Universities? Maybe he’s a gay activist Paul, or a pagan? as perhaps the researchers at the above colleges are. It’s difficult to determine whether his assertion is biased or not and whether the researchers were real scientists or gay activists masquerading as scientists. Probably the latter.

“With gay men, you don’t have that factor,” she said. “Neither of them gets pregnant, neither of them breast-feeds, so you don’t have that asymmetry built into the relationship.”

That asymmetry, I believe, is central to the healthy development of a child. The child is also deprived of suckling at her/his mother’s breast – among THE first reactions of a newborn after drawing a breath. Research has shown that kids who are breastfed do better than those who are bottle fed. So gay men are not particularly equipped as parents for these reasons.

This literature you sent me is inconclusive in that it doesn’t state the qualifications or motivation of the researchers. Is this to be the thrust of your strategy – sending me unqualified and suspect articles from dubious magazines and left wing newspapers? I’m not interested in a Papierkrieg.

I haven’t tried to silence you, you’re the one looking to censor people, but yes I openly mock your beliefs because they are offensive to me. I had a positive impression of your openness from your contributions on the abortion issue and was disappointed you would cheer such a clearly disgusting law (the censorship and repression law). I already explained the libertarian principal I was using when I referred to absolute liberty in self-regarding actions and butting out of the actions of others that don’t directly affect you, I was wasting my time because you didn’t take it on board at all, probably nose still out of joint. I’m not prepared to move from my position that nobody should have any say in anyone else’s relationship, it’s none of your business if it doesn’t directly affect you or innocent bystanders.

I have no respect for anyone who would impose their beliefs on others or who would practice exclusion, prejudice and intolerance and I don’t particularly care if you find me patronising. This is probably the last time I’ll interact with you anyway but I’ll give you something to think about before I go, not a report or a link, a scenario, react if you like, I don’t care…

If a woman gets pregnant it’s none of our business. If this woman meets another woman and settles down, it’s none of our business. If they want to protect their family by getting both parents recognised as the child’s parents, it’s still none of our business, even though this involves getting married. It gives the child some stability and rights. What do you want to do? Do you want to take the child away from his/her home because you don’t like her parents? Do you stop them getting married? To what end? We don’t even do that when parents are drunk junkies who barely know whether it’s day or night, and I know this, I’ve worked in this area. These situations already happen. Maybe it would be great if everyone had a mum and a dad and brothers and sisters and a dog and they all sat around the dinner table every evening to talk about their day. What about people’s reality? I wasn’t breastfed. Should I have been taken into care? What kind of stupid comment is that about gay males as parents? What is your solution to these situations that already exist?

Listen, I have no interest in further contact with you. You’re probably well intentioned but living in a dreamland where only your ideal situation is tolerable. Good luck with it and roll on the referendum.

PS leftwing newspaper? The telegraph? ROFLMAO it’s a Tory newspaper!

Paul, every child does have a mother and a father. No matter what research says about two mothers being brilliant, there’s a father there somewhere who has either opted out or is being excluded from the child’s life…unless there’s some arrangement where three people parent the child.

Whether it’s a male friend making a donation to a woman, a deposit at a sperm bank, or the equivalent of a tomcat there’s a world of difference between a sperm donor and a parent.

Plenty of people have been brought up well by a single parent (due to death or other absence of one parent) including several of my closest friends, none of the males are feminine nor the females masculine, and none are gay.

I don’t expect or wish you to reply to this post as I feel your last comment smacks of frustration at an unpleasant reality that has clouded your judgement and degraded your manners. wtf am I? on indeed? You’re the one with your head in the dreamland of some unattainable utopian ideal.

So this isn’t paradise! There are a lot of social problems. If your libertarian commandment “and it hurt no one do what thou wilt” was working in this society we wouldn’t have the level of attacks on the elderly, guys bringing hammers and knives to concerts, murders and rapes and junky parents and so on. It seems to me that things have disimproved over the past twenty years or so in parallel with or as a direct or indirect result of “enlightened” social policies and developments.

And your solution to society’s ills is homosexual marriage! I can’t see how that is going to stop me getting knifed at a concert for minding my own business, or improve society.

Kids need biological parents who are attached to the children longterm and who have their wellbeing at heart and who at least strive to inculcate constructive civil and societal values in them and a sense of personal responsibility for their own and others’ wellbeing, and who will not subject them to radical social experiments in pursuit of some unattainable utopia. Blood is thicker than water. It’s the reality in the vast majority of cases in Western society.

I sincerely hope the Constitution is ammended to include the definition of Marriage as solely between one man and one woman, as the kids do best in this situation. You certainly are not minding your own business if you’re an activist for gay rights and their goals. You’re getting right in there. What’s it to you execept the wish for a different reality as you can’t accept this one? You’re prepared to risk a lot with people’s lifes, aren’t you?
Roll on the referendum.

Kids need biological parents who are attached to them? I’m sorry, do you have any citations to back up your claim that adopted children suffer over those raised by biological parents?

In an adoption situation, there are usually very serious reasons why a child can’t be raised by his or her biological parents. This is viewed as both a loss to the child and the child’s parents. As adopted children get older, their adoptive parents have to be aware of their connection to their birth family and their need to know about their roots. It seems ludicrous that a situation would be set up which, from the very beginning, writes one parent or both parents out of the picture. It sounds easy to speak of a father as a “sperm donor” but a child might take a very different view of the person who contributed half of their genetic make up. Haven’t there been cases where men donated sperm, seemingly having no interest in taking a role in the parenting of their child, but changing their mind after their son or daughter is born?

@ Nick

No I don’t Nick and as you inform us in a later post, there is an absence of long term studies to show that kids do better in either one. It just appears to me to be common sense. If two people of the opposite sex create a child it seems that they should and would be the ones to look after and care for him/her.

I can’t believe any old artificial family type could be superior to the natural one.

And how about people that don’t have a religion, where do they get married?

@jeroen – thats like saying how do people without a religion get baptised.

So you’re saying that in case you’re not religious, don’t marry, because marriage is a religious thing?

In an ideal ireland , yes, at the moment however it has tax implications which would have to be rectified

So you want to abolish marriage? You want it to be purely a religious ceremony like a first communion with zero legal implications?

What system would you put in place for the legal protection of spouses with regards to children, inheritance and medical decision making?

@stephanie , thats what a civil partnership is for.

Civil partnership doesn’t cover a spouse to anywhere near the same degree. Medical proxy and the rights to adoption or inheritance of children of one of the partners are not sufficiently covered under civil partnership.

Civil partnership doesn’t cover a spouse to anywhere near the same degree. Medical proxy and the rights to adoption or inheritance of children of one of the partners are not sufficiently covered under civil partnership.

If you want to give civil partnership all the same rights as marriage that’s fine by me but I don’t see what difference calling it marriage or not makes.

“I don’t see what difference calling it marriage or not makes” , neither do I , but since this article is even here apparantly the gay community do, nobodys calling to fix the differences with civil partnership, the whole fight seems to be over the word marraige.

You seem to be of the opinion that marriage can only exist as a religious ceremony. Well, that’s plainly wrong therefore all your arguments are moot. Is civil partnership the same as civil marriage? No is the answer currently.

There is already a distinction between religious and civil marriage and the two have happily coexisted as valid strands of the same institution. The fight is for equality of access to *civil* marriage. The loving churches will remain free to discriminate against the LGBT within their respective congregations. Membership of a religion should not diminish your rights as a citizen: it is *your* choice to avail of the options open to you as a citizen or to not avail of them if they run counter to your religion. It is not and should not be your prerogative deny that choice to any other citizen whether or not s/he is a member of your religion.

Marriage is in modern times a legal contract whereas a wedding can be a religous ceremony or a civil ceremony as chosen by the couple. Unfortunately religion has co-opted the legal side of things into their organisations which they now wrongly consider to be there sole provinence.

Not to mention there are some churches which wanted to extend religious marriage to LGBT couples, such as the Society of Friends.

Unless you’re arguing we should totally separate civil and religious marriage from couples of any gender unless they choose to opt in (which I doubt you are), it’s irrelevant.

It’s a campeign for equality, nothing more. Currently the issue is prejudiced and leaving it in the hands of churches would perpetuate that. Ergo, the state must step in to solve the problem of human rights violations.

The word marriage is important. If two men told you they were partners, that could mean business partners for example. ‘We’re married’ has none of that ambiguity and it carries a level of esteem in society which ‘partnered’ does not. Marriage is not a strictly religious institution. Civil marriage is a legal compact available to anyone who doesn’t want to get married within a religious organisation.

I want to same opportunity to get married as relatives of mine who had purely civil marriages. This has been available in Ireland since 1845, so marriage here is not just a religious thing. No one I know out there campaigning on this thinks this will mean same sex weddings in churches, other than those which already do, like Unitarians and Quakers. I don’t believe in a god, so wouldn’t look for a church wedding even if it were possible.

Marriage brings the much sought after “respectability” for homosexual relationships and legitimizes homosexual relations. It’s just selfish disregard for the welfare of children

Maria, give some examples of things that we’re excluded from for one reason or another and I’m sure I can give you a logical reason.
eg. We’re excluded from being allowed to kill our neighbours.
Reason: Because those people don’t want to be killed.

Actually, I should have said…
The reason we aren’t allowed to kill our neighbours is because it would remove their freedom, equality and civil rights.

A single gay person of either gender can adopt, become pregnant or impregnate and become a parent currently in Ireland. Unmarked couples of any variety cannot. So, for the bigots amongst us we’ll use a standard prejudiced cliche, a gay man in pink flowery hot pants who goes out several times a week and brings home someone different each time can legally adopt, or he can hold his nose and just do the deed and become a legal biological father, and as long as he can afford a babysitter or has an obliging neighbour or friend he can continue his debauched lifestyle. An unmarried couple who have been in a steady faithful relationship for ten years can’t adopt, but they can make their own arrangements either by one of them becoming pregnant, impregnating or adopting but only one of them can be the child’s legal parent, and should the legal parent die the child is legally an orphan and can be removed from his/her home.
Sometimes people are treated differently because the law is a blind fool. And sometimes people pretend to have the child’s best interests at heart but really they’re only interested in protecting their own ideas of what constitutes a family and they parade the remarks of famously conservative catholic MPs or “pray the gay away” organisations to dress up their prejudices as concern or research.

Being able to say you’re married.

Yeah. There are no long term studies done on children who grew up in a home with stable committed parents of the same gender so you can’t argue there’s a strong proof that children don’t do as well in these homes.

Why do you HAVE to do that? I see no reason why we HAVE to? We just won’t, mostly because there’s a good reason – serious genetic defects of potential children as well as the likelihood that informed and in influenced consent is not likely to be present.

Any similar argument against marrying someone of the same gender? Have countries with equal marriage legalised pedophilia? Let’s check – oh…wait…nope. Still fine!

When you say “dangerous”, exactly what hazard are you talking about? Are you sure you’re not just fear-mongering? You do know marriage equality has existed in other countries for some time now – to what perils have those countries subjected themselves? People who are anti marriage equality should probably just stick to the bible-bashing. They never stand up to scrutiny when they attempt real-world reasoning.

I presume when you say real world reasoning, you mean when people don’t agree with your relative thinking.

Ah, Paddy! Once more with the “won’t somebody PLEASE think of the kids” scare-mongering (but enjoyed the nice diversion into an article about Syria!). Same sex marriage does not mean that children will be farmed out wholesale to same-sex couples. It is a malicious red herring and you know it. For once, mention just ONE way in which the institution of marriage would be endangered. Just one. I ask this every time and never get an answer. As for the whole “wombs for rent” scenario (you really should be a tabloid journalist – you have a real flair for sensationalism), even without access to marriage, same sex couples (like many of heir heterosexual counterparts) have been using surrogate mothers to have kids. Marriage won’t really affect that – access to lots of money would. It is also a total separate issue.

You responded to my comment but of course, you ignored my question. Care to have another go at it? Without resorting to “slippery slope” arguments, can you point to any unbiased evidence of negative outcomes connected with gay marriage at all? Maybe from countries who have had it for a few years already? If you can find any which couldn’t be equally used against straight marriage, It will be the first time any of us have heard them.

Bring on the fair, reasoned, well researched arguments against equal rights for all citizens!

I’m sure there are oodles.

I’m actually dying for the journal to publish an article from the anti-gay marriage side of the argument, just so we can consolidate all the feeble arguments put in the comments sections of the pro-gay marriage articles into one big column and be done with it.

If you were to write a decent article-length piece against allowing gay couples to marry, I’m sure they’d consider it.