The announcement by the British Government that it intends to extend to gay couples the property and inheritance rights afforded to married couples is welcome. It is an important sign that the gay community can perhaps at last begin to look to a status beyond mere tolerance - full citizenship.
The proposal involves legal recognition of a long-term relationship through new, registered civil contracts between same-sex couples who have lived together for a significant period. Although conferring similar rights to marriage, it is explicitly not that, and those who would wish for all its trappings will have to be content, for now, with an unofficial, private ceremony, still unsanctioned by the state.
Because no direct equivalence with traditional marriage has been proposed, even the British Conservatives, shaking off their homophobic past, have backed the idea, although they will not endorse the extension of such rights to unmarried heterosexual couples. The Labour government is also unwilling to go that far, though for reasons of pension cost to the state, rather than morality.
Among the rights likely to be recognised are the right to "next-of-kin status" in dealings with doctors and hospitals, and in relation to funeral arrangements; the right to apply for maintenance in the event of a breakdown in the relationship; similar inheritance rights to those of a spouse; spousal health benefits; surviving-partner benefits under a pension scheme; and the right to claim damages if a partner is killed through the negligence of someone else.
In May the Equality Agency explicitly endorsed similar changes in Irish law. In its report, Implementing Equality for Lesbians, Gays, and Bisexuals, the agency argued that "the right to nominate a partner (with equal rights to those available to married heterosexuals) should be extended to same-sex couples." Its call was endorsed by the National Economic and Social Forum.
And, in the Senate, Mr David Norris has already won cross-party support for the idea of strengthening the legal protection offered to the increasing numbers of couples living together in "irregular" unions, heterosexual and gay. He will propose a bill on the issue, the Domestic Partnership Bill 2003, in the New Year.
Such changes would be a generous and humane response to the real difficulties that add to the pain faced in separation or on the death of a partner, and an important assertion that the law must reflect the inclusiveness that tolerant Ireland pretends to espouse.