I’m re-upping this post in the light of Michael McDowell’s recent piece for the Sunday Business post, in which he again suggested that he regarded children being raised by their biological parents as ideal, and again suggested no constitutional or legal structures that would try to ensure that as many children as possible would benefit from that ideal.

Former Justice Minister, Attorney General and PD member, Michael McDowell may dissent from liberal orthodoxies on matters of economics but he has always been reliably liberal on social issues and therefore it is no surprise that he is for same-sex marriage. But I’m not sure about his reasoning.

Writing in The Sunday Independent, McDowell seems to accept that the ideal is for a child to be raised by a mother and a father. But he says it is no more than an ideal. That makes it seem somehow attainable, which would be extremely bad news. Fortunately, it is the lived reality of 72 percent of Irish children today.  That figure should really be higher. How could we make it higher? Well, we could promote and encourage it through social attitudes, social policy and law.

In fact, the ideal of children being raised by their own mothers and fathers is exactly what Article 41 of the Constitution as presently written has in mind.

If that is changed in the way the Government and the opposition want, then we will be changing completely and radically what we believe to be the ideal.

We will be saying that families consisting of two married men or two married women are just as fundamental to society as a family consisting of a married man and woman. More importantly, we will be saying that each of these scenarios is just as ideal from the point of view of the Constitution and of society, and just as fundamental.

But since McDowell seems to acknowledge that the ideal is to be raised by your own mother and father, why in the world would he wish to change Article 41 to say this is not the ideal? It makes no sense. It makes much more sense to keep Article 41 as it is and then to try much harder to promote what is ideal for children.