Yes and No groups step up campaign ahead of referendum

Voting Yes or No on May 22


On Friday, May 22 next voters will be asked whether the Constitution should be changed so as to extend civil marriage rights to same-sex couples. The proposed amendment to Article 41 is the insertion of the line: “Marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex.”
 If the proposal is passed, a marriage between two people of the same sex will have the same status under the Constitution as a marriage between a man and a woman.
Married couples of the opposite sex or the same sex would be recognised as a family and be entitled to the Constitutional protection for families.
Here The Mayo News asks two readers with very different viewpoints to explain their reasoning for voting Yes and No.

Yes
Aoife Herbert

HEALTH and happiness are basic human rights, the essence of life and love and all things in between.
We have heard a lot about equality, and sure, that’s mightily important and intrinsically linked. But I am calling for a Yes vote on stronger grounds – from the very core of our republic, from the place that says that all people deserve to be happy and healthy, regardless of who they choose to love.
Marriage is important; something to strive for. It is about two people who love each other and want to commit to each other and in a country based on equal citizenship there is absolutely no doubt that civil marriage should be open to all, including lesbians and gay men.
In an article where Irish doctors and medical professionals called for a Yes vote, The Irish Times last week quoted the New England Journal of Medicine editorial which concluded that same-sex marriage is ‘a matter of justice and a measure that promotes health’. Why? Because behind every basic principle of good medical care is the core value that everyone should be treated equally.
It is this exact same principle that has fuelled the children’s rights groups in this country (Barnados, Children’s Rights Alliance and the ISPCC) to come out in favour of a Yes vote and is the same principle that you should consider when voting on May 22. You have the power to make this country a happier and healthier place to live; you have the opportunity to create a fairer, more equal Ireland.
The children, I hear you say, what about the children? Well, this referendum isn’t about children specifically, but since they have been consistently used as pawns by the ‘No’ side from day one (with nothing but careless inconsideration and lazy, intoxicating slogans and signs), I will offer my say. Regardless of the outcome of this referendum, there will be many children who will continue to be brought up in families with parents of the same sex. The health and happiness of these children depends on their parents, and them having equal access to the rights and protection afforded to them by marriage is critical to this. It’s as simple as that.
Furthermore, think about the message that we are sending to our youth should we continue to live in a society where gay people are still considered as lesser than. This referendum is a golden opportunity to move this country forward, to tell our LGBT youth that they are equal, loved and respected and that they need not feel any other way. More importantly, a Yes vote declares that homophobia is not welcome here, and that violence and bullying on the basis of one’s sexual orientation will not be tolerated in this country. Societal acceptance is crucial for our LGBT youth and it would be absolutely detrimental to deny them of that.
There are the facts, but there are other truths to consider and if you have even an ounce of emotional intelligence, you will realise that voting Yes is the right thing to do. In this article I have talked about equality in terms of health and happiness, what a Yes vote means from a medical perspective, but away from the journals and official quotations, there are so many personal stories.
Stories that lie behind the walls of doctors’ surgeries, between children and parents, in classrooms, dressing-rooms, on farms, in pubs and woven into the lives of everyday people. You owe it to your gay corner forward, butcher, maths teacher, accountant, drag queen, you owe it to yourself furthermore, and you owe it to your country. Health and happiness are basic human rights that absolutely everybody should have access to in 2015 and voting Yes will support that. In the words of Martin Luther King Jnr: “The time is always right to do the right thing”.

Aoife Herbert from Killala is a contributor with The Mayo News.

No
Peter Gill

I N 1830, Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote that ‘a Constitution is an idea arising out of the idea of a State’. Further, he stated that ‘the Constitution has real existence, and does not the less exist in reality, because it both is, and exists as, an idea’.   I could not agree more.  Also, let me from the outset make it clear that I support every form of ‘non-traditional’ family.  I have no religion.  I despise the thought of anyone, particularly the State, curbing the religious, sexual, spiritual, emotional or familial rights of any citizen.  But - I do not regard the constitution as ‘law’, or the law.  
The Law - the rules, by which we live, organise our society, care for our fellow citizens - emanate from and are inspired by the constitution, but the constitution of any country or nation state is always aspirational.  It is a set of guiding ideas or general principles.  The Constitution of Ireland does NOT ban same-sex marriage.  In fact, no definition or aspiration for marriage is given in the constitution and this is good – very good, not the least because marriage and families are complicated.
One in eight people in Ireland live in a one-parent family and one  in four families with children in Ireland is a one-parent family. There are over 215,000 one-parent families in Ireland today, that is, 25.8 percent of all families with children (Census 2011).  The constitution has nothing to say about these families, nor should it say anything.  In 20 years, between 1980 and 2000 the extra-marital birth-rate in Ireland rose from five percent to 32 percent, now one of the highest in Europe (Hantrais, 2004).  Carmel Hannan, in her Ph.D. thesis ‘The Changing Nature of Family Formation in Ireland’ (2008), outlines the evolving scope of ‘the family’ in modern day Ireland. She outlines ‘traditional patterns of family formation (marriage and births within marriage as well as childless marriage)’  and addends to these ‘more recent developments such as, non-marital cohabitation and extramarital births’.
 This is ‘the family’, in my world, and it would include same-sex parents, or multiple parents, as is the case when divorced partners (of any sex), with children, separate and find new partners (of any sex), thus creating extensions of parenting families.  A bisexual woman in a same-sex relationship, with a child (where the child’s father hopefully will be participating in the parenting), might split from her partner, form a heterosexual relationship, have another child and then be parenting with three other partners.  Should this ‘family arrangement’ be regulated by the constitution?  Absolutely not!  Is this ‘family’ protected by the constitution?  This is definitely a reasonable interpretation of article 41 where the: “State recognises the Family as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law”. Nothing here about ‘kind of family’. Then the State pledges ‘to guard with special care the institution of Marriage, on which the Family is founded, and to protect it against attack’. Nothing to argue with here. What is absolutely clear is that the state does not ‘define’ marriage. Marriage is clearly an idea and an aspiration, but it is not defined as being between a man and a woman.  Good, so far, no discrimination against same-sex couples. The State allows for dissolution of marriage where ‘there is no reasonable prospect of a reconciliation between the spouses’.  All good. Then comes the tricky bit where an SaorstΡt proclaims ‘that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved’.  Is this a discrimination against me, a man?  Possibly, but I accept, indeed would affirm, this aspiration of the Irish State.  So, I see absolutely no discrimination? against same-sex marriage in the Irish Constitution.  I absolutely do NOT want a confused definition of marriage introduced into the constitution. I want the family, as protected within the constitution, to be a rainbow, not confined to one of each or two of the same.  I am happy with “the idea” of mothers receiving a special protection. .
Same-sex marriage should be dealt with through an amendment to the ‘Civil Partnership and Certain Rights and Obligations of Cohabitants Act 2010’. There is no need for a constitutional amendment. Let the constitutional ‘idea’ of marriage, family and motherhood be. A marriage law allowing same-sex marriage will not be repugnant to it. I am voting No.

Dr Peter Gill is Emeritus Professor of Education at Gävle University, Sweden and is a longtime resident of Clare Island.