At last something approximating a debate took place in the Dail yesterday concerning the Civil Partnership Bill. Several Fine Gael deputies have now spoken up in favour of a conscience and/or religious freedom amendment of some sort including Damien English, Leo Varadkar, Lucinda Creighton, Seymour Crawford and of course, Sean Barrett.
Several other deputies focussed only on the conscience rights of public employees, dismissed them, but didn’t make clear their attitude to the conscience rights of private individuals, or the rights of religious organisations to maintain their ethos in the face of this legislation.
Still others focused on the possible unintended consequences of allowing a conscience opt-out, e.g. that a gay couple could be refused service in a bar. But no-one wants to see this happen and an amendment could easily be written to ensure it doesn’t. (Incidentally, why has no-one ever worried about the unintended consequences of ‘equality’ legislation for Christians? Check out what is happening is Britain as Christians are increasingly falling foul of such laws. We regularly catalogue these cases on this website.)
Mary O’Rourke seems to think that a photographer or ‘cake-maker’ could refuse to facilitate a same-sex civil union if they wished. But they won’t be allowed to, not under the Equal Status Act as it is to be amended.
Labour’s Joe Costello for his part seems to fundamentally misunderstand the basis of the argument in favour of traditional marriage. He rightly says that marriage under the Constitution envisages that men and women marry to procreate. For this and other reasons he concludes that “religious tenets rather than secular pluralism are uppermost in the current constitutional provisions dealing with marriage and the family.”
With all due respect to Deputy Costello, the fact that men and women procreate is a fact that has nothing at all to do with religion. What could be more obvious? The notion that men and women marry specifically to procreate also has little enough to do with religion. You can believe this without being in the least religious. Obviously, not all married couples have children, but the vast majority do, and we have given marriage the status of a social institution in order to recognise this fact. Why oh why is this entirely elementary point so hard to understand?
However, that said, it was good to see that some TDs at least recognise the potency and justice of the conscience argument. Maybe, just maybe, common sense might prevail on this one. I’m not betting on it though because Leinster House is increasingly prisoner of the new absolutism, namely ‘equality’ absolutism, and too many of our TDs are bidding to outdo one another in paying homage to this new form of absolutism.
