A Catholic bishop has stated that campaigners for a Yes vote in Ireland’s same-sex marriage referendum are not seeking ‘marriage equality’.

Speaking at a gathering in Dublin last night, Bishop Kevin Doran, the Irish bishops’ spokesman on bioethics and a member of their Council on the family and marriage said that in order for ‘marriage equality’ to exist in fact would necessitate a change to the meaning of marriage or the removal of the openness of marriage to procreation as an intrinsic part of marriage.

What Yes campaigners are actually seeking, the bishop stated is “a different kind of relationship which would be called marriage”.

Accepting that such a relationship, like marriage, includes elements such as commitment between a couple and love for one another, Bishop Doran pointed out that the relationship nevertheless excludes the openness of the sexual relationship to procreation, an essential component of marriage even when a given couple cannot conceive due to infertility.

Describing the unspoken challenge to the meaning of marriage posed by the referendum as “the elephant in the room”, Bishop Doran insisted that, despite arguments in some quarters about equal treatment for persons of different sexual orientation, “that is not what the referendum is about”.