Courtney McGrailThe Irish Catholic has asked an interdisciplinary team, which includes Prof. Eamonn Conway and Dr Rik Van Nieuwenhove, theologians at Mary Immaculate College University of Limerick, and Mr Patrick Treacy SC of Integritas, to consider and respond to the difficult questions we all face when deciding how to vote in the referendum.
The main argument put forward by those seeking to redefine marriage is that it is only about publicly recognising the relationships of gay and lesbian people, and this is necessary in the interests of fairness and equality. It is argued that the referendum has nothing to do with children, or with children rights.
This is not true. The section of the Constitution to be amended is entitled “the family”, so it is clearly not just about adult relationships. In fact, marriage has always been about more than the private relationship between the two individuals concerned. By looking for the Irish public to redefine marriage constitutionally, those advocating same-sex marriage are acknowledging that marriage is not just about the private relationship of the couple.
There are many kinds of special human relationships that nourish and sustain people. In the particular circumstances of our lives we can find ourselves deeply enriched by such relationships. But the State does not have or seek a role in publicly recognising them, nor do we expect or demand that such relationships gain public recognition.
Why, then, is marriage different? The answer can only be that marriage, as between a man and a woman, plays a unique part in the public life of a community. This unique role is in bringing forth and nourishing new human life and in sustaining that life in the best possible way. Anthropologists wonder if the institution of marriage would ever really have evolved if young humans, as distinct from many other creatures, did not need such lengthy and sustained nurturing after birth.
It is true that some couples cannot have children. It is also true today many parents find themselves rearing children on their own; true also, that many children are reared without a relationship with their father or mother. Families and communities try to compensate as best they can in these circumstances. But we don’t go out of our way to create these situations. We do not cease to wish that where at all possible a husband and wife would know the support and love of one another in rearing their children, and that a child would know and experience as closely as possible the love of a father and a mother. This we still see as the ‘common good’.
It is this role that marriage plays in the common good that justifies it being singled out, protected and cherished in a special way. If it were only about the loving relationship of the couple, why would it need special constitutional protection?
Redefinition
The proposed redefinition of marriage as a legal contract “without distinction as to their sex” is saying that the special role marriage has had until now in bringing forth and nourishing new human life, only possible between a man and a woman, that is, with distinction of sex, will be incidental to marriage. Moreover, it is saying that it is a matter of indifference to us as a society whether a child is raised by a father or a mother, or by two men or two women, and more basically, by its biological parents at all. This is what we will be voting in to our Constitution, in which as a country we enshrine our deepest values, if we vote yes.
In an attempt to confine the referendum debate to the recognition of same-sex relationships and take the issue of children and their rights out of the equation, the Government is bringing forward The Child and Family Relationships Bill, which is to be voted upon by the Oireachtas before the referendum on redefining marriage. Some will see the intention to pass this law in advance of the referendum as unfair, and perhaps even as high-handed, because it pre-determines a matter that is so important that the people should really have first been allowed their say.
The change in law will give same-sex and cohabiting couples the same rights to adopt children as married mothers and fathers. However, this doesn’t make the issue of children irrelevant to the constitutional referendum. Without the proposed change to the Constitution, the proposed changes in the law could still be judged unconstitutional.
Reproduction
In due course, no matter how carefully the law seeks to regulate matters, technologies that until now have only been used to aid infertile heterosexual couples will be the ordinary means of reproduction for same-sex couples, who, biologically, cannot otherwise have children. Children could end up with several people they could properly refer to as their parents: The genetic mother who donated the egg, the surrogate mother who bore the child in her womb, the adopting lesbian mother, the father who donated the sperm and the adopting homosexual father. If the proposed law is enacted and the Constitution is changed, all of these kinds of parenting will have to be considered part of the ‘new normal’. Experts say that in such situations the issue of legal guardianship of children will be very difficult to determine.
Culture
Are these changes about adults’ needs rather than the needs of children? Are they likely to contribute to a culture in which children are viewed as commodities? We have to remember that our culture predisposes us to value personal self-fulfilment above virtually everything else.
It is our view that the introduction of same-sex marriage will put the needs of some adults before the natural rights of children to a father and a mother. This cannot but be damaging to society in general and to the institution of the family in particular, which, as Article 41 of the Constitution currently states, is to be guarded “with special care”.
Prof. Eamonn Conway, Patrick Treacy SC, Dr Rik Van Nieuwenhove