Madam, - What is wrong with passing a law that will benefit a small minority of people, while at the same time producing no negative consequences for the vast majority? To my mind, there is none. Yet Pat Nally (July 14th) bizarrely asserts that the Civil Partnership Bill is of interest to only a very small number of people (not true, when it will benefit both gay and heterosexual couples), with the implication that it should, on these grounds, be abandoned in favour of more important matters like "dealing with the economy" (as if that were so easy).
Would Mr Nally really hold that we should never legislate as to enshrine the rights of minorities in law? Should minorities never be protected or assisted? In any discussion of law and democratic rule it is easy to make the mistake that rule by the majority means rule for the majority. But this is not so.
The majority elects a government, whose job it then is to govern for the whole of society, not just those who put them into office. Whether Pat Nally or Senator Jim Walsh like it or not, gay people are most certainly a part of Irish society, and the Fianna Fáil party has let it be known for the better part of a decade now that it is in favour of legislating for civil partnerships. Any argument that this Bill is now being "forced" on an unwilling public is nonsensical — if the electorate didn't like the package they wouldn't have signed up for it.
Indeed, the ugly spectacle of Senator Walsh and his dissident rump coming out (so to speak) against what has been his party's official line for years raises important questions about the structure of Ireland's political system.
Unelected by the public, merely appointed by his political cronies to the Seanad, Mr Walsh has been given a State-sponsored platform to sound off against, and attempt to stymie, proposed legislation on grounds that are neither pragmatic nor philosophical, but merely conservative-ideological. - Yours etc,
OWEN CORRIGAN,
Drimnagh,
Dublin 12.
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Madam, - Breda O'Brien (Opinion Analysis, July 12th), in presenting her case against recognising same-sex marriages, makes what I take to be some crucial mistakes. I would like to comment on two of these.
Firstly, in common with a number of other commentators in this area, she seems to confuse the institution of marriage itself with the status this institution has in society. She correctly points out that there are increasing pressures on the traditional family unit. But these pressures are neither created nor seriously exacerbated by the State relieving some of the pressures on non-traditional families. The situation is not a zero-sum game, where any move to help the one comes at the expense of the other.
I accept that moves to help non-traditional models may lower the status of the traditional family from its previously exalted position, but this is not the same thing as damaging that institution itself. Perhaps the State should be doing more to shore up that institution, but this is a separate issue to that of recognising the increased diversity of family units. Secondly, Ms O'Brien's case relies on the idea that the traditional family unit is and should be the primary building block of society. But marriage, even if confined to relationships between men and women alone, is not the same thing as the traditional family unit (otherwise infertile couples, or couples who simply had no interest in having or adopting children, could not count as being married).
Marriage between a man and woman is necessary for the traditional family unit, but it does not follow from this that marriage must therefore be confined only to those willing and able to enter into this unit.
Therefore, Ms O'Brien's argument against same-sex marriage is not valid as it stands. - Yours, etc,
DONNCHADH O'CONAILL,
Department of Philosophy,
Durham University,
Durham,
England.