28 Jun 2008
Start of the silly season
It's great that the government has at last got round to starting the Civil Union Bill on its journey into law. However...
1. Why introduce it within weeks of the Dáil going on its summer holidays? Our highly paid representatives are forcing themselves to stay in Leinster House for an extra week this year, but even so, they won't get back to pretending to run the country until the start of October. What sort of priority will the Bill have when the tanned TDs turn their refreshed attention to business like the Lisbon Treaty, the recession, construction industry bosses mewling in their private offices?
2. Up to 30 Fianna Fáil TDs and Senators are apparently against the whole thing – while their spokesperson Senator Jim Walsh is at pains to deny they are anti-gay - they believe that their homosexual constituents don't need any special laws just for them (or unmarried heteros, presumably). They're afraid it will damage the special status of heterosexual tax-amnestied marriage. I've yet to see a credible explanation of why traditional marriage will be so damaged by Civil Unions, or why the apparently parlous condition of the institution has been ignored by the people who now profess to care so much.
3. Will this watered down Bill damage the gay marriage activity that has been so impressive for the last couple of years? I guess the hardcore energetic activists at GLEN, MarriagEquality and LGBTNoise will keep on with the good fight, but there's a danger that other more casual involvement might fall away when the Greens are crowing at some, possibly still very distant, point in the future, about what they've achieved on our behalf?