Civil Marriage For Gay People

Is civil marriage for gay people progressive or not? This is the interesting question raised by Eamonn McCann in his column in the last edition of Hot Press. As an organisation campaigning for opening out civil marriage to gay people, the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network (GLEN) believes this is a radical and progressive demand. Developing strategies for radical change is not simple and the issues in this case go to the heart of progressive politics.
GLEN, as with other organisations seeking progressive change, has always had to respond to the most pressing concerns of our community. As people continue to be fired from their jobs because they are lesbian or gay, we have worked with the trade unions to protect ourselves and also worked to achieve anti-discrimination legislation in employment. As lesbian and gay people continue to be harassed, attacked and even killed because they are gay, we have worked with the Gardai to counter this. In advancing changes in employment protection there was no implied acceptance of the inequities of the labour market generally. In working with the Gardai, there was no implied acceptance of the limitations of the criminal justice system.
Other needs are now pressing, some increasingly so. Relationships forged between new lesbian and gay immigrants and Irish or EU nationals are unprotected and many face the immediate threat of separation. Whether a gay couple can be together or not can depend on the whim of an immigration official. Many lesbians who have helped raise a child are literally legal strangers to that child and can be separated from the child. A significant factor in these cases is that there is no legal recognition of gay relationships whatsoever. These are urgent issues that require an urgent legal response.
Opening civil marriage out to same sex couples is way of addressing these issues and there are practical advantages to such an option. In the UK for example, although gay people still cannot get married, the new Civil Partnership Act for same sex couples does at least closely follow marriage law. A practical benefit of this is the relative legal simplicity involved. If a new partnership model covering a whole range of relationship types was created, with entirely new rules, this would have led to legal uncertainty and would be more difficult (and costly) for lawyers to advise.
It is also interesting that, in the UK, right wing opponents of the Civil Partnership Act in the House of Lords sought to wreck the legislation by tabling amendments to extend its provisions to others. For example, amendments were tabled to extend civil partnership to close relatives who have lived together for 12 years or more. The UK Lesbian and Gay Lawyers Association could find no information about any carer or family organisation that supported this amendment or any people who would be prepared to enter into it and who would have been helped by it.
Including same sex couples in civil marriage also has a powerful symbolic impact by giving equal status to same sex and opposite sex relationships. Right wing opponents recognise this and have strenuously opposed it. Eamon McCann refers to the lively celebrations of gay couples registering for marriage in Massachusetts, but there is a much larger political picture in the United States. A key element of this is the endorsement by President Bush of a constitutional amendment that would ban the enactment of gay marriage. Some people feel that civil marriage for gay people would strengthen the overall institution of marriage that they regard as an oppressive institution. However, the downside of this point of view, as noted by the writer and activist Sherry Wolf, is that it could make the case for inaction at exactly the same time that the Bush Administration is moving ahead with its right-wing assault.
GLEN recognises that there are differing opinions on this issue, including within our own communities. In Ireland, there is also the added complication of significant restrictions on divorce. We support civil marriage for gay people because we are an equality organisation and same sex civil marriage is an important reflection of equal treatment in law. But we work on other measures, such as equal education opportunities, to address the concerns of our communities and to promote equality more generally. The key issue is whether accessing marriage will hinder these efforts for greater equality. As Sherry Wolf has noted, when the US Supreme Court struck down state bans on inter-racial marriage across the United States, it was greeted as a blow against racism. By overturning the ban on same sex marriage, are we not striking a blow against anti-gay prejudice and inequality?