February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The Domestic Partnership Bill 2004, which guarantees the same rights in law to gay couples as married heterosexuals, will be introduced by Sen. David Norris, a veteran campaigner in Ireland for gay rights.
“In terms of financial benefits such as inheritance rights, gay men, lesbians and unmarried couples are still second class citizens in this state,” Norris said last week.
“Take a gay couple who have been together all of their adult lives: if one of those men dies, his partner at present has no legal rights to inherit his long-term lover’s pension. The same is the case with mortgages where a house cannot be handed over to the life-long partner if their lover, who is the mortgage holder, were to die. It is a terrible injustice which must be righted.”
A decade ago, homosexuality was still a criminal offense in Ireland and commentators have drawn attention to the lack of controversy surrounding the bill’s introduction as a measure of Ireland’s progress in the last 10 years, and they have compared the move with the acrimonious debate in the U.S. surrounding same-sex marriage, where thousands of couples were married in San Francisco’s City Hall and elsewhere in the nation, concurrent with President Bush’s proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution barring same-sex couples from attaining marriage rights.
Norris also said that Irish gay men find it impossible to bring a partner to Ireland from abroad
“I know lots of men whose partners come from that continent, but because their relationship is not recognized in law, they have no rights, as heterosexuals do, to bring a foreign partner legally into the country,” he said.
“In 1993 being gay was still illegal, so I suppose we have already come a very long way in the liberalization of Ireland,” Norris said, reflecting on his 20 years as an independent senator. “This final battle is a nice way to end my political life on a positive note.”
Catholic commentators have said that while Ireland’s Catholic hierarchy will oppose the Bill, the same-sex marriage issue “is not going to be lightning rod for Catholic anger.”
If the Irish government were to try to block the Bill, Norris has said he will come out of retirement fighting.
“If the government does obstruct the legislation, there is one battle left: I will take them all the way to the European Court of Human Rights,” he said.