Conor Murphy
Deputy Opinions Editor
About two years ago when I was working on Henry St. on a wet winters evening, I heard a deranged man screaming about hell and gays and all that. As he railed against this and that, a raspy voice came from up the road. It was from a skinny, dirty, cold, completely ignored homeless man wrapped in a doorway to escape the pattering rain. He turned his head and raised his voice at the middle class guy in the coat on the soap box and asked “would you not just let them love in peace man…”.
The anti gay marriage side rests its altar of intolerance on a few ever more wilting arguments. None of which I’ll go into here because they’re all thick. And also because if you build an argument on negation of your opponent’s arguments all you’re left with is a grumpy hollow victory. I will just note that the pro gay marriage side should ignore any attempts to be baited into conversations on the biological imperative of homosexuality; our biology should be no requirement on who we should marry for obvious reasons.
What both sides should be able to agree on is that the current situation is discrimination of obvious standing. To maintain a state sanctioned discriminatory practice would require demonstration of no benefits to reversing it. What the anti-equality movement never talk about are the multitude of positives: the beauty of love, the love of family, the equality of future society that stem from equal marriage. They will always dream up fictitious negatives and try to hammer these into your brain.
You are supposed to not notice that far from breaking down the traditional role of marriage, gay marriage re-affirms marriage as a moral level above the more free love overtones of the last few decades. The ideological right are fighting the wrong side of this battle. The growth of civil partnerships and emotionally, but not legally, committed couples, further wears down traditional dominance of state sanctioned marriage over other types of romantic relationships. Gay marriage introduces a whole sector of society to the tradition of legally and publicly stating a huge commitment as a couple and as a family under a bond of legality that will, no matter what happens, take several years under Irish law to shake.
Never mind that being in a stable long term relationship is good for your health, career and mental well being. It gives thousands more people a little extra impetuous to be there for their loved ones. Having to go through this public commitment of love “through sickness and health” might give people extra confidence to work through issues as one unit. Strength to let love blossom through a length of maturity and time that none of us can possibly fathom in the formative years of a relationship. Marriage being a definite possibility inevitably gives a much longer frame of mind to any relationship.
They also don’t want you to care that allowing full adoption rights to gay couples will help give gay relationships a much more committed and serious future both in their own respect and within the spotlight of wider public conscious. A family unit is rightly idolised for its giving nature and allowing more people into that circle is as loving a gesture as one could imagine. Also that allowing adoption become the mainstream practice for a sector of society might actually encourage some of the more desperate public to carry to term and give up their infant for the incredible sacrifice of adoption.
You should ignore that if the West affirms gay marriage unequivocally and across the board it gives us far greater clout in both condemning the hate crimes against gay, bi and transgender people perpetrated around the world. It allows us to unequivocally call out the horrific stupidity of legally punishing homosexuality where now we are just chastising countries for being a bit too homophobic compared to our goldilocks level of “just right” homophobia. Ireland as a traditional catholic country, (with a fairly large traditional Irish American contingent across the pond) could be one last country to go before gay marriage is seen as an absolute must in the West.
And no, gay marriage won’t solve the integration issues, but it’ll help. It won’t stop people getting squeamish at men kissing/riding on TV. But it’ll make it more passive homophobia taboo so people will start to beat it out of their system. The harsh use of the word “faggot”. Thinking you’ll get mawled in a gay bar. Again this is not the end point but we are heading towards full integration if we legalise gay marriage.
Often this “debate” is compared to the battle over abortion, but there is a subtle difference. There are logical arguments on both sides of the abortion debate and I have seen secular arguments for both sides, however if you’re arguing against gay marriage then your arguments have as much earthly intellectual weight as an angel fart. We know because we’ve all been living in the midst of this debate for twenty plus years now and I’ve yet to hear one argument that gave me any reason to pause. A second’s pause even. Nothing. There are not two sides to every argument. You’re a moral failure. A languishing religious dinosaur trying to slow down the rest of society’s progress by proclaiming your ignorance of homosexuality because you aren’t allowed to get off on racism anymore. F**k off. In fifty years time you’ll be seen in the same vein as the people who spat on mixed race couples.
The pro-gay marriage side will go on ahead of you. Writing in this newspaper yesterday, Matthew Taylor said we should just get rid of marriage all together. I would agree, further down the line. But we can’t have history looking back at this moment and say that we got rid of marriage so the gays couldn’t touch it. Let us all experience a few moments of at full legal equality. Then we can move forward to an even more logical, loving and hopeful future. Whether or not we stand by marriage as the future bastion of mature relationships is irrelevant of the fact that we should approach that topic from a position of equality.
And if you’re honestly standing by some prehistoric notion of traditional marriage under the law, stand aside and mutter it to yourself like you’re on the corner of Henry St.
We’re moving on.
