Love & Marriage
Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it … but gay people can’t. Fall in love, settle down and build a future together, that is. It’s an incongruity in our self-styled modern European republic, but one which Bertie Ahern indicates he may be seeking to rectify. I hope it’s only a matter of time before this overdue change in the civil landscape happens and same-sex couples have full equality under the law, including inheritance, pension and taxation rights. I’d like to see them legally entitled to register their mutual commitment in a civil service, if they wish. If nothing else they might bring a degree of style to a dull ceremony.
I didn’t grow up thinking gay love was particularly acceptable, but times have changed – although only up to a point. Unfortunately it still excites the snigger factor. We’ve embraced what was once called the permissive society in so many spheres that it seems bizarre gays continue to attract violence at worst, ambivalence at best. Even where gays aren’t overtly condemned there’s a tendency to regard them as different. Different as in flawed.
I shared that tendency until I met the first person who told me he was gay, whereupon I realised he was gay and normal. And one didn’t cancel out the other.
It was during a train journey across England, when I chatted to a teenager my own age. Fifty miles out of London he suddenly said “you do know I’m a homo” and asked if he could try on my eyeliner.
I thought about it for a few seconds and, seeing no reason why not, handed over my cosmetics’ purse. The retired couple opposite us stood, expressed their displeasure in scathing terms and moved to another carriage. I was embarrassed on the boy’s behalf but he shrugged “sticks and stones”. He was blushing, though. Then he pointed to a scar on his chin, courtesy of bullies in his Connaught schoolyard. People feel threatened by what is different. A few decades on and the times may be more tolerant, homosexuality is no longer a love that dare not speak its name, but it still draws bigotry. And since the law does not treat gay lovers equally to heterosexual ones, society feels entitled to follow suit.
So full credit to the Taoiseach if he does more than simply explore civil union options. Frankly I don’t mind if Bertie Ahern is embarking on this course of action because it’s right or because it’s expedient. (I wonder if he totted up whether the gain in the gay vote is offset by the loss in the fundamentalist vote?) Just so long as discrimination against gay men and women ends. It is a human impulse to stand before friends and family and make a public commitment to the person you love. And I can see no reason why the opportunity to formalise your relationship in the eyes of the law should be restricted to one sector of society.
This isn’t about supporters being trendy liberals or gays being militant or the country going to the dogs – this is about bringing us into line with other nations such as Denmark (1989 trailblazers), France, Germany, Belgium – I’ll spare you the list, it’s a long one – which recognise civil unions to a greater or lesser extent. Spain, in particular, held its nerve and legislated for full marriage despite fierce opposition from the Catholic Church.
There are those who claim amending the law legitimises relationships which are an offence against nature. There are those who prefer to stigmatise the six in every hundred of our population believed to be gay. Others might not go that far but suggest it would devalue marriage as a sacred institution.
It’s time some people realised there are other lifestyles and their narrow interpretation isn’t the template. I suppose we have a tendency to be frightened of the unknown, although marital violence, rape and incest scare me more than a consensual, loving relationship between a same-sex couple.
Still, I was pleasantly surprised by Bertie Ahern opening the Gay And Lesbian Network’s new offices, and touched by how much joy his endorsement brought the gay community. Even campaign-toughened crusaders admitted they were moved. It can’t be easy, growing up out-of-step with most others around you. And some of us thought we had it tough because of our freckles.
There are all sorts of reasons why a committed gay couple might wish for a civil contract. Financial security, for example – currently there is nothing to stop a family ejecting a cohabitee on his or her partner’s death. Alternatively should one of them will a home to the other, the recipient is liable for inheritance tax.
Next-of-kin entitlements are a fraught area. What if your partner goes into hospital? You may have been a couple for decades but since you’re neither married nor related you may as well be the contract window-cleaner.
I was struck by an interview with a gay couple in Britain who waited almost 40 years for their civil partnership, and were 66 and 77 when finally able to enter into it last December. One of them, a retired professor, described being in hospital and his consultant flatly refusing to deal with his partner. Not only was it insulting, it was an extra source of stress for the ill man.
Married people expect part of their pension to be transferred to their spouse on death and fairness dictates this should also apply to gay couples. It will cost the Exchequer, but in a week where we learned of a €16m bill for a non-existent integrated transport Smart card, and about heath service consultants earning €1,500 overtime a day, I hardly think gay pension rights are an issue. We can do much more contentious than that.
Then there’s the health and wellbeing aspect: doctors believe registered partnerships improve gays’ mental and physical health. Some figures indicate rates of depression, drug abuse and cancer are higher in the gay community, but a recent British report concluded that legal unions had a positive impact. Stability is healthy.
Nor can the emotional dividend be ignored. Gay people are no different to the rest of society: they need intimacy and the same nurturing ties as any couple. They struggle with identical financial, family and work problems and rely on a partner’s support, as we all do. Most people crave security sooner or later and, while a civil partnership cannot guarantee this, it does offer some measure of confidence-building. In Denmark only 15 per cent of gay marriages end in divorce compared with 46 per cent of straight ones. I imagine there are few gays who, at some point, haven’t wondered if there was something wrong with them. It’s thought that a quarter of young male suicides are men who believe they may be gay.
Perhaps if society were more inclusive, fewer of these young men would take their own lives because we’ve made them feel inherently dysfunctional, deviant or sinful. Gay civil unions could be a crucial step towards acceptance.
