Ireland, once a Catholic bastion, promises civil unions for same-sex couples

Ireland, amid fast cultural change, is set to approve civil unions for same sex couples.

By Jason Walsh | Correspondent

Christian Science Monitor

12.07.09

Dublin, Ireland – As the United States engages in a heated debate over gay marriage, European Union countries are rapidly striding toward total recognition of same-sex civil unions, if not marriage. The most recent example is Ireland.Last Thursday saw Ireland become the latest country to edge toward marriage equality for homosexual couples. The Irish parliament read and debated the Civil Partnership Bill 2009, introduced by Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern.

Despite Ireland’s socially conservative image, opposition to the bill is virtually non-existent and will likely pass into law this month with widespread support from opposition parties Fine Gael and Labour as well as the governing coalition of Fianna Fáil and the Green Party.

If passed, the bill would see Ireland join a club of nine EU members that officially recognize civil unions. In addition, a further four EU countries – Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden – fully recognize same-sex marriages.

In the US, meanwhile, Maine and New York last month became the 31st and 32nd states, respectively, to vote against same-sex marriage though five states allow it and New Jersey may soon make six.

The Irish bill would grant same-sex couples rights in relation to domestic violence, residential tenancies, succession, refugee law, pensions, medical care, and equal access to state benefits and immigration.

Minister Ahern has told the few dissenters in his Fianna Fáil party that he would not allow the bill to be reworded to include a “freedom of conscience” amendment that would see businesses, organizations, and individuals who objected to homosexuality choose to treat gays in a civil union as singles.

Despite the fact that the bill represents a sea-change in Irish attitudes to sexual orientation, many have complained that it still allows some discrimination.

“The bill is clearly a stepping stone but does not go far enough,” says political commentator and election adviser Robert Cassidy. “It has failed to address the rights of the child within a civil partnership as described with the bill and that is a major flaw.”

MarrigEquality, a group that argues for full recognition of same-sex marriages, complains that the bill in fact institutionalizes discrimination. “Civil partnership without the option to marry sends a clear message out to the public that the government do not consider gay and lesbian relationships to be equal,” says the organization’s director Moninne Griffith.

Similar laws in the UK are set to be tested as a heterosexual couple, Tom Freeman and Katherine Doyle, have threatened to take the British government to the European Court of Human Rights after they were refused a civil union on the basis that only homosexual couples could be registered.

The latest move in Ireland comes against the backdrop of a country undergoing radical social and economic change. Ireland’s furious economic growth – and recent decline – are well known around the world, but the country is also undergoing a spiritual transformation.

Despite the passage into law of an act outlawing blasphemy, Ireland is a less religious country today than at at any point in its history. The Catholic Church, long the lodestone of Irish life, has been hard-hit by seemingly endless revelations about child sex abuse perpetrated by priests – and covered-up by the Church hierarchy with the support of police.

Ireland’s transformation has been relatively rapid. Condoms were legalized in 1985 and divorce in 1997. Homosexuality ceased to be a criminal offense in 1993 after the country was taken to the European Court of Human Rights by academic David Norris, an openly gay man who is now a senator in the Upper House of Ireland’s parliament.

Abortion remains outlawed in Ireland with the primary objections being from religious groups, both Catholic and Protestant, who stand united on the issue.

Latin America's first gay marriage halted

Buenos Aires, Argentina (CNN) -- Latin America's first same-sex marriage, set to be held in Argentina on Tuesday, appeared derailed after a judge filed an injunction to stop the union until the issue can be reviewed further.

Judge Marta Gomez Alsina's ruling blocks an earlier holding by another judge that found city laws banning same-sex marriage unconstitutional, the court said in a statement.

Alex Freyre and Jose Maria di Bello had planned to make their marriage official at a civil ceremony and chose December 1 because it is World AIDS Day.

The registrar responsible for the civil marriages in Buenos Aires has been notified of the ruling, the court said.

The couple would attempt to get their wedding license anyway, the official Telam news agency reported.

"We're continuing with the preparations because we, as planners, nor the couple itself, have not been notified" of the injunction, said Maria Rachid, president of the Argentine Federation for Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transsexuals, according to the news agency.

Gomez Alsina's injunction could not overturn the earlier ruling because she is a trial-level judge and not an appellate judge, Rachid said.

The original ruling was made on November 10 by another trial-level judge, Gabriela Seijas, who responded to a petition made by Freyre and di Bello.

Seijas ruled that the ban on same-sex marriage was illegal and ordered the proper authorities to grant the couple a marriage license if they applied for one.

The court's decision applied only to Buenos Aires. Same-sex unions in most of Argentina remain illegal.

"The law should treat each person with equal respect in relation to each person's singularities without the need to understand or regulate them," Seijas said in her ruling.

Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri said after the ruling that his government would not appeal the decision.

Monday's ruling was a temporary measure to postpone the marriage until Seijas' original ruling could be reviewed in depth, presumably by an appeals court or the supreme court, the court statement said

Countries in Latin America, a region strongly identified with the Catholic Church, have recently given more attention to gay rights.

In September Uruguay became the first Latin American country to allow same-sex adoption.

Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador are also addressing the issue of same-sex civil unions.

World AIDS Day: Witness to Compassion

World AIDS Day: Witness to Compassion

By: Diana Butler Bass

Tuesday December 1, 2009

Categories: AIDS, Christians

December 1 is World AIDS Day--a day to remind the human family of the toll of the AIDS epidemic and take stock of progress against the disease. It is, indeed, a global day that connects rich and poor, people of all races and creeds, and men, women, and children in a common understanding of our fragility, our responsibilities, and our compassion for one another.

For those of us personally touched by AIDS, it is also a day to remember friends and family lost--a sort of contemporary Day of the Dead. In many ways, I was the last person one would expect to have been directly affected by the AIDS epidemic. In the late 1970s, I was a student at an evangelical Christian college in California, a place known more for New Testament scholarship and mission trips than wild weekends in San Francisco.

Yet the late 1970s were the heady days of the gays rights movement and Harvey Milk. When Anita Bryant's anti-gay crusade came to our state, many of my evangelical classmates supported her movement. But a few classmates did not. Instead, they choose to come out.

One was my friend Jeffrey Michael. We were part of a tight group of people who formed a community of questioners at the college; we tended toward theological, literary, and political edginess in the midst of the evangelical environment. In the safe embrace of youthful friendship, Jeffrey Michael told us that he was gay.

He was the first person I ever knew who had come out; the first person I ever knew who said he was "gay"; and the first person I knew who was seriously a gay Christian. He was kind, funny, caring, faithful, and thoughtful--with a blistering theological intellect and a profound trust in God's presence in one's life. He wanted to become an Episcopal priest (long before such things were openly discussed). While we were students, he was in a car accident, nearly died, and suffered brain damage. But, miraculously enough, he pressed through intensive therapy and graduated with honors in religious studies.

But our friendship was not easy. Of the questioning friends, I was usually the last person to change my mind on any issue; I struggled with Jeffrey Michael's confident sense of identity. I had been raised to believe that it was wrong to be gay--socially, morally, and biblically. Jeffrey Michael and I had blistering fights over scripture and theology. Although I was loath to admit it at the time, his arguments shook me to the core. And many days, it was easier to ignore him and escape to my own comfortable prejudices than to deeply engage the challenges he presented to my small world.

I tried not to listen, but I had heard. I heard his testimony of joy, of self-discovery, of pain, of fear--of all the complex emotions of a young gay man seeking to understand God and the world. After college, he became a nurse to AIDS patients and poured himself out to the "untouchables" of the 1980s as a sort of "Brother Teresa," a priest without formal ordination, among those whom the church then wanted to forget. Eventually, he died with them: A priest who became a victim, the nurse who succumbed to the plague.

If you googled him, you would not find him. For all these things happened in the days before the Internet. Jeffrey Michael's witness exists only in the memory of friends and family. His name may be on the AIDS quilt. Yet, in life, Jeffrey Michael heroically embodied three great concerns of our day: faith, homosexuality, and AIDS. By the way he lived and died, he showed that compassion is the foundation of true Christianity, compassion toward those who are outsiders by either identity or disease. He taught me that the way of Jesus is marked by practicing hospitality--the act of welcoming the stranger--no matter how different or frightening the stranger may be--to the table of God.

All these years later, evangelicals like Rick Warren take great pride in their involvement in AIDS issues in Africa and get "face time" on cable news trumpeting their compassion. Yet Rick Warren still thinks it is appropriate to deny gay and lesbian persons basic human rights in both the US and Africa. Apparently, his compassion only extends to people who don't "deserve" AIDS. My evangelical hero is Jeffrey Michael. As a young believer, he didn't just preach compassion or donate money to a cause. He lived compassion. And he lived it courageously by taking the risk to be fully human--just as God created him--and was willing to challenge his community in friendship and love no matter what the cost. And Jeffrey Michael knew the cost of compassion. On this World AIDS Day, I remember him.

http://blog.beliefnet.com/progressiverevival/2009/12/world-aids-day-witness-to-comp.html