Referendum on Gender Equality (THREADBANS IN OP)

You wouldn’t take a job without a contract, nor should you enter into a long-term relationship without one.

I don't buy this analogy at all; a LTR is not akin to a job, or shouldn't be if it's a fulfilling one. To me it should be more like an intimate personal experience such as a close friendship or a religious conversion. You wouldn't enter a legal contract tying you to either of those for the rest of your life and IMO neither would you to an 'intimate partnership' in a sane world. So in my book civil marriage is a nonsense and should be abolished

There was no suggestion in this particular case though that the institution of marriage needed to be deconstructed, whether to suit the stupid and the feckless or otherwise.

It’s not a question of whether or not he could have avoided anything, their children certainly couldn’t have avoided being discriminated against either, which was the basis on which it was determined that the provisions of the Social Welfare Act were found to be unconstitutional. The criteria on which they were based was found to be discriminatory against parents and children based on the parents marital status. That’s why it was considered capricious and arbitrary, as it took no account of the fact that in Irish law parents have equal obligations to their children regardless of whether or not they are married.

You didn’t do a very good job of explaining all this to your friend (whom I’m assuming you did not enter into a legal contract with!), because marriage is not a legal contract with the State, it’s a legal contract between two parties who have the right to enter into marriage in accordance with Irish law, recognised by the State. But that’s me being unnecessarily picky, the State also recognises marriages not contracted within the State. Could’ve saved yourself all that pain by simply acknowledging that other people have different views of marriage than your own. For other people who aren’t you, their marriage is about romance, the church and the big day out, or whatever their own personal reasons are for either entering into marriage, or not.

The whole purpose of the upcoming referendum would mean that should a family find themselves in such unfortunate circumstances as the loss of a loved one, they would not be treated less favourably by the State on the basis of their marital status, as that would be as the Judge put it “arbitrary and capricious”, regardless of the existence of a will outlining their wishes.

Interestingly and a potential nightmare for the government, Judge Hogan said in his summary that because Article 42A.2.1 was amended after the children's referendum (2013?) to refer to "unmarried parents" it naturally follows that all parents are treated equally regardless of marital status and have to be considered a family. This has huge implications for one parent families:

"The reasoning in Nicolaou has, in any event, been overtaken by the express words of Article 42A.2.1⁰ (as inserted by the 31st Amendment), which in turn necessarily means that the reference to “parents” in Article 42 and Article 42A must be taken to include all parents, regardless of their marital status. This in turn has consequential implications for what constitutes “the Family” for the purposes of Article 42.1 and, by further extension, Article 41 itself".

https://www.courts.ie/acc/alfresco/0e6360f9-3c7b-4c71-97eb-48433f587db3/2024_IESC_1_(Hogan%20J).pdf/pdf#view=fitH

Woman is a woman, or maybe they might add man, and give us equal status at home, cuz it's not always the woman who keeps the house going!

Either that or just delete the whole "woman in the home" clause and be done with it.

I think that poster is saying they are voting no because advertisers show men doing cleaning

Historically, the main function of marriage has not really been to regulate the relationship of the couple; for better or worse, they largely do that themselves. It's more to regulate the relationship between the couple and the wider community. A couple who marry are taking a relationship which would otherwise be purely private and concern only themselves and are making it the concern of the wider community, asking for social, official, administrative, legal, etc. recognition, acceptance and support. So you get married in order to opt in to a package of rules and practices about inheritance, taxation, tenancy rights, etc that are designed to recognise and support a commited, exclusive, conjugal relationship.

Whether that's how we see it now is another matter, but that's the purpose that marriage was designed to serve, and seeing it that way explains a good deal about the legal and administrative consequences of choosing to marrying (or of choosing not to).

@One eyed Jack

Just came across a thread on this here:

couple of relevant posts

I love that word that judges use - "capricious". As if the legislators sat around with a few different drafts and tossed a coin or threw dice to decide which one to use. They wrote the law that way because they believed they had an obligation to favour the marital family, from article 41 of the constitution. But, the Supreme Court has nixed that understanding. So, for the state to claim the judgement has no impact on the referendum is disingenuous to say the least.

As Colum Kenny observed recently. Most of the misinformation in this campaign is coming from the government.

Nobody is throwing anything away

Perhaps "Those with durable relationships".

I'll be voting against the proposals anyway

Just on Archbishop McQuaid, watched a documentary about Ireland's Olympians on TG4 recently and he popped up as one of the big opponents to Irish women participating in the Olympics. This was the 50s when it had become generally accepted women could compete in sports, just not long distances like the 400 metres!

Thinking out loud: if you were to present a case to a Judge as to whether polygamy is a form of durable familial relationship or not how would she view it in a supposedly secular country?

Only that's not what it says.

Getting tired of what's actually in the constitution being misrepresented.

They chose international women's day so they could wrap their amendment up in feminism in any old effort to get it to pass.

Saying civil marriage should be abolished is ridiculous.

You want to abolish a contract between two consenting adults but retain ceremonies where one of the parties is supposedly a supernatural being. Makes sense...

Who are you to say that the marriages of hundreds of thousands of people are not of any value?