Same-sex parents hope that talking to TDs about civil union in advance of next month's Heads of Bill will have an impact, writes Róisín Ingle
Seventeen-year-old Clare O'Connell knew exactly the message she wanted to get across to her local TDs when she and her family met them to discuss the issue of same-sex marriage in Leinster House earlier this week.
"We go to school and play basketball and listen to music. We eat pasta and do our homework. It's not radical, we don't live in a hippy commune and the only difference is that we have two women as parents. I just want to know whether the politicians think it's right that my Mum and her partner are not allowed to get married. I just want them to see that our family is normal, almost boring, really."
According to Martin Mansergh TD, politicians aren't usually approached about an issue that has been gaining momentum since the Katherine Zappone and Ann-Louise Gilligan case and which will be up for debate again when the Government's Heads of Bill on civil partnership is introduced, as expected, next month. "It is not a matter that I can recall being raised with me, face to face, in my constituency from any angle, either for or against," he told the Dáil last November.
This may be about to change. MarriagEquality, a new lobby group launching in Dublin on Monday, has initiated a campaign called "You are not out until you are out to your TD". The name might be a mouthful, but it's expected to encourage gay and lesbian couples and their friends and families, to start tackling their local representatives on same-sex unions.
When the same debate was going on in countries such as Canada and Spain, where full marriage is now available to same-sex couples, the personal experience of the families affected was thought to have had a positive impact on more conservative sections of the community. "Telling your story is hugely important," says Orla Howard, who lives in the Dublin North Central constituency with her partner Gráinne Courtney, mother to Daire (13) and Clare , and their dog Juno.
The family's story, like that of many Irish families, is not straightforward. Clare and Daire are the natural children of Courtney from a previous marriage. Their father has since remarried, a right they are hoping might be afforded to their mother. The girls were bridesmaids for their father and stepmother last August and say they'd like to perform the same role for their mother one day.
"It's really important to us," explains Clare, before the family meets Fine Gael's Richard Bruton and Independent TD Finian McGrath. "We want to be able to say we have a real family, we don't want anyone to be able to question that. We want people to see that children of lesbian parents aren't all messed up, we are normal, we deserve the same rights as anyone else". At their school, Mount Temple in Dublin, the fact that their parents are lesbians is not an issue. "I've never had a negative reaction," says Daire.
BRUTON ARRIVES TO greet the family, carrying a copy of Fine Gael's four-year-old document on civil partnership and admitting that same-sex partnerships are "not my area of expertise". The conversation quickly gets bogged down in legal and political argument, with the TD insisting that civil partnership, the kind mooted by the Government, will provide a solution to the thorny issues of succession, inheritance and tax rights for same-sex couples. The family's view, which is backed up by solicitor Anne Colley's 2006 report on civil unions, is that only full marriage will ensure full equality for gay and lesbian couples.
The FG TD counters this with another assertion of Colley's, that legislating for full marriage in the case of same-sex couples could be open to a constitutional challenge. "If you go beyond civil partnership to provide for marriage, you would need a referendum to pass it," he says. "Our approach is pragmatic. In the country as a whole, there are a lot of conflicting views on what is marriage and what is family and pursuing the constitutional route has always been very divisive . . . I think it would be difficult to convince the country about that, whereas civil partnership is a way of establishing something that works and then you can revisit the deeper, more philosophical issue when it's in place."
By around the fifth mention of "pragmatism" the teenagers' eyes have glazed over, while their parents try again to put across their point of view that creating a "sub-category" of people through civil partnership amounts to discrimination. "We are not looking down on one group or up to another," says Bruton. "We make provisions for all things in law, but we try to make sure our laws aren't discriminatory."
Clare tells Bruton that she has been looking up the Constitution and points out that marriage is not defined there as a union between a man and a woman.
"And in Spain they just changed the definition of marriage, so we could do the same," she says. "Orla is not biologically related to me, but I would see her as just as much a parent as I would see Gráinne or my father. She drops Daire to Tae Kwondo and the both of us to school if it's raining and she does all the normal things that a mother does. I think it's ridiculous that the State can't recognise that and if, God forbid, something happened to Gráinne, Orla would have no rights over me. Legally, she is a stranger to me."
Bruton tells them he believes civil partnership will solve this problem. Asked whether he has an opinion on whether gay people should be just as entitled to marry as heterosexual people he says: "I don't really, I would say I'd need to attend several seminars to get my mind around it". Does he have a gut instinct on the issue? "My gut instincts are on both sides of the fence . . . " he says.
WHEN HE LEAVES, the family expresses disappointment that he didn't seem more supportive of their cause, but says that discussing the issue with a politician was a positive experience.
"We are a family and it just feels as though nobody is recognising that so it's good to let them know we are here," says Courtney. "What we don't want is for civil partnership to be, as David Norris has suggested, like a dog licence where you apply for every right as you need it instead of all your rights being given to you as they are to heterosexual couples, so we need to let our feelings be known".
While Fianna Fáil's Seán Haughey, Dublin North Central's other TD, couldn't find the time to meet them, their next appointment was with McGrath, who tells them he fully supports their call for marriage. He talks about the "rump" in the Department of Justice that is "very conservative and will always try to slow people down from moving in a progressive way". He agrees with Howard and Courtney when they say that any legislation must be "bullet-proofed from an equality point of view" and that "if you are going to introduce legislation, you should do it properly because it's unlikely to be revisited for years".
HE ASKS QUESTIONS, refers to his own gay friends and has practical advice for his constituents: "I'd suggest you get a core group of us TDs together who support the principles of equality on the issue of marriage, I think I could get around 20-25 to kickstart it, and then we could build it from there and we could be the ones to push it in the Dáil," he says.
The family is pleased with the response from McGrath, who says he believes they have done the right thing in coming to talk with their local TDs.
"You should get everybody to do that, especially if they have a Minister in their constituency," he advises and, before leaving, promises to send them a list of TDs who he feels will need most persuading. He says he will raise the issue during his weekly meeting with the Government Chief Whip. Later, the family reflects on an interesting afternoon. "I have to say that, despite everything, I am really optimistic that we will get something as close to marriage as makes no difference, even if they call it another name, we can live with that as long as we have the rights," says Howard, adding, "I would marry Gráinne tomorrow if I could". Courtney says she hopes gay and lesbian couples will start to make themselves more visible to politicians "so that TDs know they exist. Politicians have a responsibility to all their constituents, we matter just as much as any other pocket of the population".
"I think people are afraid of the unknown," says Clare, while Daire says that living with two women as parents has made her and her sister very open-minded. "There are people around the country who might never have even met a gay person and so they might have concerns about us having gay parents, but look at me and Daire, we are not that bad are we?" Not bad at all.