The Government's planned civil partnership legislation is cowardly, rooted in bigotry and treats gay people as second class citizens, Amnesty International claimed today.
The organisation’s Irish executive director Colm O’Gorman attacked the proposed legislation as he prepared to address a Gay Pride event on the subject in Belfast.
Mr O’Gorman will use the annual Amnesty Belfast Pride lecture to repeat his claims that the legislation unveiled by Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern last month does not go far enough.
Mr Ahern has said the Civil Partnership Bill gives people in long-term and same-sex relationships many of the rights of married couples, but could not go further without breaching the Constitution.
But Mr O’Gorman said: “At a time when countries around the world are moving forward, ending inequalities, we are enshrining discrimination in Irish law. This is not about the right to marry, it is about the right not to be discriminated against because of who you love.
“Failure to provide full marriage equality means that same-sex couples will not have full protection under the law.
“In effect, it is creating a second-class form of marriage for what the Government clearly feels is a second-class group of people.”
Mr O’Gorman said the most serious weakness of the Bill was its failure to sufficiently provide for the children of gay couples. “A same-sex couple will not be allowed to jointly adopt their children,” he said. “Children raised by same-sex couples will be denied the same protection as other children because the Irish Government chooses not to acknowledge their existence and denies their rights.”
He said Government was discriminating against gay parents and so was discriminating against their children. “It is a cowardly decision, undermining the rights of children on the basis of ill-informed arguments rooted in a bigotry that still exists in a small and increasingly marginalised section of Irish society,” he said.
The lecture is being delivered tonight in the Belfast city centre venue, The Black Box.
Mr O’Gorman said the legislative proposals perpetuated the impression that the gay community was separate from the rest of society.
“This is the kind of thinking that sees gay people as something ‘other’, something to be afraid of and defended against, as a community that has no place in normal society,” he said. “There are positive aspects to this legislation and some have characterised it as a step towards equality for gay couples, but in a way it shows us just how far short of equality we actually are that human rights activists can be expected to settled for this.”