Referendum on Gender Equality (THREADBANS IN OP)

You know there's gonna be a general election in the pretty near future to execute a more obvious protest vote? 🤣

You cannot capture every possible scenario within a constitution particularly a hundred years later and in fairness at the time it was written it was likely that it didn't capture every scenario then either.

An even with that, did/does it really matter?

With that you then have to ask on the scale of importance how important it is to spend time and money on this and for me it is well down the list.

As such I don't disagree with a change, but I amnt exercised enough outside of a conversational post here. As such, as others have said, this needs to be held with another voting day, bundle then in together - it really isn't that important.

Divorced parents with children are not a family currently.

It absolutely has impact on people's lives.

Our constitution is the basis of our rights, 'the family ' are accorded special place in society, and 'the mother ' staying in the home afforded special rights, because of 'the family '

Which is great, but does not afford those same rights to any families that are not based on a married unit. So children of single parent families, are not protected as family the same way as children from married units.

Also, anyone else staying home to mind children, keep the home, act as careers etc are not given the same special protection as women in the home.

So, yes it does impact people's lives. Sometimes I think people just don't realise how important out constitution is.

I can see this crashing and burning quite badly. Such is the public mood out there.

I don't think that's right.

In various cases the courts have commented that references in the Constitution to "the family" refer to the family "founded on the institution of marriage".

Those cases are quite old and the Supreme Court might not follow them today. There are other cases which suggest a wider interpretation - e.g the brother or sister of a deceased tenant might be able to invoke their constitutional status as a family member; the family relationship between siblings obviously doesn't depend on whether their parents were married or not.

But even if the cases are interpreted strictly, there is nothing in them to say that a family must be founded on a subsisting marriage. If one spouse dies the marriage has ended, but the surviving spouse and the children still constitute a family "founded on the institution of marriage". When both spouses have died, the children will still constitute a family for constitutional purposes. If that is true of a marriage ended by death, it must equally be true of a marriage ended by divorce; the spouses couldn't be divorced unless they were married, and therefore the family is still one founded on the institution of marriage.

Martina, is that you? 😂 the Burkes are a perfect example of a family educated by their stay at home mother who have achieved fantastic educational results yet can't hold down a job or interact with the rest of society.

How anyone can think the Burke children represent the optimal outcome in parenting is quite frankly worrying. Unless your Martina or Sean Burke.

Sounds sensible but IIRC there's been criticism of this approach in the past as distracting from the referendumm in question, e.g. the referendums on jusges' salaries and Oireachtas inquiries, two subjects that no doubtr had the whole country agog, were held on the same day as the 2011 presidential election

I have made a conscious decision to stop voting for anything that changes the constitution, as every time we do change it seems to get abused not too long after.

Repeal? Yeah, sure, whatever...

What, like they'll listen to people, change the wording so it's more acceptable then run it again?

What b@stards.

Just as much as there's no need to turn this into (yet another!) Trans bashing thread.

Why?

What is wrong with equality? What is wrong with giving men caregivers the same rights and protections as women?