Valuing Families

It's about equality.

That sums up our policy on marriage and partnership rights that we launched yesterday. The Pic shows myself, Eamon Ryan and Trevor Sargent and members of the USI LGBT Campaign in front of the Dáil supporting Dr. Katherine Zappone and Dr. Ann Louise Gilligan in the court action to have their Canadian marriage recognised in Ireland.

Roderick O’Gorman our candidate in Dublin West (grinning from ear to ear behind Trevor's shoulder) put a lot of time and effort into making this policy a reality.

The Policy concentrates on three issues:

-providing legal rights for partners that have been living together for three years or longer (co-habiting couples)

-putting in place a Register of Civil Partnership for those who wish to have the State recognize their relationship, and

-recognising civil marriage between same sex couples.

I’d love to see the State give a bit more recognition to civil marriage in the first instance. Here in Ireland you’re lucky to find the Registrar of Civil Marriage in an office at the back-end of a suburban office park. In Rome you can indulge yourselves in the City Hall beside Michelangelo’s Campidoglio.

If I had my way I’d install retired City Managers in the Rotunda of City Hall on Dame Street beside Dublin Castle, and give them purple robes to perform the ceremony.

Dream on.