A group opposed to gay marriage was accused of engaging in a publicity stunt yesterday by walking out of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution.
The Mother and Child Campaign, a spin-off group from Youth Defence, refused to take questions from TDs and senators after delivering a strongly worded attack on gay marriage.
The group also accused the committee of bias, saying it was engaged in "a farce, with a predetermined outcome".
Dr Seán Ó Domhnaill, a psychiatrist speaking on behalf of the campaign, said it had handed in an estimated 20,000 submissions in written form but had only received acknowledgement of 8,000. This was a "very serious development" that undermined the forum's credibility.
Rejecting the allegation of bias, committee chairman Denis O'Donovan TD (FF) said "we have no agenda." He noted only 1,300 petitions were found in a box alleged by the campaign to have contained more than 9,000.
Other members of the committee criticised the delegation for refusing to be questioned at the end of their submission.
Senator Michael Finucane (FG) said the group had come in with one objective - "to get publicity". Of their views on the Constitution, he added: "I wonder are they in a time warp themselves back in 1937."
Senator Brendan Daly (FF) claimed the content of the group's presentation was tantamount to incitement to hatred.
The campaign cited research claiming violence among homosexual partners was two to three times more common than among married heterosexual couples.
It added: "Homosexual men and women are reported to be inordinately promiscuous involving serial sexual partners, even within what are loosely termed committed relationships'."
Also addressing the committee yesterday was Gay and Lesbians Unions Eire (Glue), which expressed support for Senator David Norris's Private Members' Bill on cohabiting couples.
The group's co-chairman, Mark Lacey, said "99 per cent" of its members did not want marriage "in a religious or Catholic sense". Rather they wanted "legal recognition" of their unions.
The Irish Council for Civil Liberties called for the Constitution to recognise "the family in its various forms as the primary and fundamental unit of society". It added there should be a right of all persons to marry "where marriage is the union of two persons for life to the exclusion of all others".
