PROPOSALS TO give greater protection to same-sex and cohabiting couples were not anti-family and would not undermine the institution of marriage, solicitor and family law expert Geoffrey Shannon told the Céifin conference in Clare yesterday.
He was responding to the controversy generated at the previous day's conference when Cardinal Seán Brady expressed serious reservations at the proposals for the Civil Partnership Bill and said it appeared they would grant cohabiting and same-sex couples the status of marriage "in all but name".
The Primate of All-Ireland suggested that the Government could face a legal challenge on the issue.
However, Mr Shannon said the proposed legislation did not equate civil partnership with marriage, and he questioned the basis on which a legal challenge could be taken. The legislation would not permit heterosexual couples to register a civil partnership. "And as same-sex couples can't marry as the Constitution stands, there is no danger of their being wooed away from marriage by an alternative institution."
The Civil Partnership Bill proposals continued to see marriage as "the gold standard and the best predictor of the durability of a relationship," Mr Shannon said. "By extending legal protection to alternative family forms, you do not diminish or demean the marital status."
Mr Shannon said the introduction of divorce was "the most significant change in the family since 1937", but the most striking feature of our divorce system was the relative invisibility of children.
Children felt they had no say in the process but research suggested that children who adjusted well to parental separation felt that their perspective had been taken into account.
"We are poised between a traditional assumption that children are protected best by keeping them ignorant of their parents' circumstances, and a newer idea that children need to know about and participate in family affairs if they are to cope with change," said Mr Shannon.
Mr Shannon said society needed to support marriages that could be saved and enable those that could not be saved to be dissolved "with the minimum amount of distress, bitterness and hostility".
He also warned of legal, social, moral and ethical issues "of a very significant nature" because of advances in reproductive technologies. There was no legislation to guide infertility clinics and they were expected to determine whether to treat potential applicants on the basis of the perceived best interests of the unborn child.
"There are huge challenges there and challenges which we haven't grasped," he said. "Firstly, who should these technologies be made available to? Should their use be confined to heterosexual married couples? And should cohabiting couples, single parents and same-sex couples be able to avail of these technologies?"
Clinical psychologist and Irish Timescolumnist Marie Murray said some people might not approve of the many different family arrangements that had emerged, but there was an ethical imperative on everyone to ensure that they did not undermine the children who were living in non-traditional family units. "People need support and most of us are doing the best we can with the resources available," she said.
Ms Murray said the fostering of a sense of altruism in our community would help us to adapt to these changing family patterns. She said children as young as 18 months old had shown the ability to be altruistic and to give without expecting a reward.
Our "untapped capacity to give and not count the cost" could be the solution to many of our problems, she said.
