Madam, - Many married women will be delighted with the recent High Court decision today in relation to same-sex marriage.
Mind you, anyone who can read and has access to Bunreacht na hÉireann will not be surprised to learn that, in the eyes of the judiciary, the special position of marriage referred to in Article 41.3.1 has been shown to mean a relationship between man and woman. When de Valera's Constitution was approved by referendum in 1937, it included this article which still reads: "The State pledges itself to guard with special care the institution of marriage, on which the family is founded, and to protect it against attack."
How many Irish people honestly think Dev was talking about maiden aunts, cousins, or even adopted sister-in-laws when he included the word family? Family means children and you can't found them from a same-sex union.
Assuming gay and lesbian couples obtain satisfactory legal and civil rights, the push to use the term "marriage" can only be seen in terms of the symbolic. Why else would they yearn to hijack a word that the vast majority of people have always understood to signify a relationship between a mixed couple which can lead to the arrival of children and later to future generations? Neither the judges nor the law can make a word mean something it doesn't. I would suggest that the word marriage is already bespoken for, and therefore not a candidate for redefinition. - Yours, etc,
SUSAN PHILIPS, Glenealy, Wicklow.