Nuala O’LoanWhile the institution of marriage must be protected Irish people must respect the rights of and “love shared between gay people”, writes Nuala O’Loan
Marriage is the union of one man and one woman for life to the exclusion of all others. It’s an aspiration, something to which a couple commit in the expectation, I am sure, that they will always love one another as they love each other on the day of their wedding. Of course that does not always happen.
Marriages do break down. Interestingly, a recent survey showed that 54% of those who divorced subsequently regretted it, and wished that they had stayed together. Nothing is ever simple. It does not even always happen that people really love one another on the day they get married. Some people do get married for a variety of other reasons. Be that as it may, most marriages are occasions of great joy and expectation.
In the natural order of things most couples will be able to have children, and being open to the possibility of children is one of the requirements for a valid Catholic marriage, for we see marriage as being the relationship within which children conceived by the couple can best be nourished and grow to achieve their full potential.
A child, born of a man and woman, who subsequently lives in the family of that man and woman knows who they are.
Difficulties
Whatever difficulties they may encounter on the journey of life, and inevitably there will be difficulties, they know who their mother and father are, and hence who they are. In Ireland there is great interest in family and where people came from and to whom they are related.
Heritage is profoundly important to people. We see this in the numbers of people seeking from across the globe to establish their history, where they come from, what their people were and what formed them to be the people they are.
Inevitably there will be situations in which children grow up with people who are not their natural parents, and these may result in children who grow up to be totally satisfied and content, or it may be that such children seek to find out who their natural parents were, which can lead to difficulties for both parents and children, for such situations are sometimes immensely complex. Whilst mothers may be traceable, there are children who can never even know who their fathers were.
It is important too, we have learned, that children do not enter into sexual relationships with their siblings, for there is a much greater likelihood of any child they may have suffering a genetically-based disability.
So it is critical for this reason also that children know who they are and who they are related to. It is also through living in a family with a mother and a father that they will experience the different strengths and contribution of men and women.
My own father died when I was 13 and I was acutely conscious of what was lost because of his dying, though my mother did all she could for us. No matter how poor the individual parents are in their parenting and social skills (and none of us is perfect) there is an innate bond between mother and child, the mother having carried the child and between father and child, for without the father the child would not be. Mother and father bring different attributes to the marriage. It is no secret that men and women are quite different, through both nature and nurture.
So despite all the deficiencies which exist in families, society has always recognised that there is a strength, and some certainty in the situation which draws men and women together and makes them want to commit to each other before their community, or if they are religious, before their Church and before God, and to make a home for their children.
For Catholics there is the understanding that not only are the couple united before their friends and community, but also that their union is graced, blessed, enabled and sustained by God. Because we are human there will be difficulties, some of them insuperable, as when one of the couple is violent or unfaithful, but many of the difficulties will simply be the product of two human beings living together for decades, and faithfulness is possible, despite all our frailty.
And so the Church and society has chosen to regulate this particular relationship between man and woman, with its potential for each couple to have children (though one in seven couples will experience fertility problems). It has long been recognised that there is something very precious to be protected in the context of the family, ties which are almost incapable of articulation, but which will be recognised by so many people. The family is the first community a child knows, all other communities each child experiences stem from the family. In protecting the marriage relationship society has sought to ensure its stability, recognising it as the basis for a stable society.
What is happening in Ireland now is that people are being asked whether “marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex”.
Vilified
Those who say ‘no’ seem to be being vilified as being homophobic, intolerant, prejudiced, biased, intolerant and even stupid. When I pointed out last week that the Garda Representative Association (GRA) should not have compromised the independence and impartiality of policing by its call for a ‘yes’ vote, there was a somewhat hostile response from among the ‘yes’ camp, in part because I am a Catholic!
Those of us who disagree with the question have the right to do so. Insulting and abusive behaviour and tearing down ‘no’ posters really are not compelling arguments to vote ‘yes’!
It is of course the case that there are men and women who love only those of their own sex. The law recognises this, creating civil partnerships, unions in law which are protected and which bring within them all the rights of security, welfare, inheritance and the right to act as the next of kin which are accorded in law to those who are married. Such couples, however are incapable of having children together. Any child could only ever be the child of one of the partners.
There would always have to be a third party, who may or may not be known to the resulting child, involved in their conception. The law recognises the right of people outside marriage to adopt children, whether as single people or in same-sex unions. So such couples are not deprived of the right to raise children.
Put simply the only question for the Irish people is whether they wish to change the definition of marriage, with all that it entails in terms of the potential for a man and a woman together to have their own children, to include a relationship which is not capable of producing children. There is inequality in the fact that gay couples cannot have children as heterosexual couples can. This is a biological difference. It is not possible to make the same that which is so fundamentally different.
That is why I have said that this word, ‘marriage’ defines a particular situation, which is recognised both by the Church (affecting those who believe in the sacrament of marriage) and the State (affecting all men and women who enter into this relationship as a consequence of which certain legal rights and obligations follow). The ‘yes’ campaign seek to change the meaning of marriage to something totally different from our current understanding. This may be what the Irish people choose to do.
The question must be why should they choose to do so, when in law gay couples have all the legal rights of heterosexual couples? Surely, as a society we are mature enough to celebrate difference and to allow the preservation of the institution of marriage as the union of a man and a woman with all that is uniquely possible as a consequence of that union, whilst still respecting and acknowledging the different rights and the love shared between gay people?