Take ‘same-sex’ out of debate, conference told

Removing the phrase “same-sex marriage” from the debate about equal marriage rights for the LGBT community could help the cause, a conference in Cork on marriage equality heard yesterday.

Boris Dittrich, advocacy director of the LGBT programme of Human Rights Watch told the conference, which was organised by the law faculty at University College Cork: “Don’t use the term ‘same-sex marriage’. People stop thinking about the point you are making and start thinking about sex.

“They don’t like to think about anal sex. I learned to talk about ‘marriage equality’ and the ‘freedom to marry’ and I think that really helped.”

Mr Dittrich campaigned for same-sex civil marriage in the Netherlands until it became legal in April 2001.

“In a campaign sometimes you might have only 10 seconds to persuade people to support you,” he said.

Fine Gael TD Jerry Buttimer said he hoped that if marriage equality legislation is passed following a referendum in Ireland, people who are in civil partnerships could “upgrade”.

“I think there will be some right of movement, I hope the majority of people will move to marriage equality,” he said.

Prof Robert Wintemute of King’s College London said there were two options after a government legalised civil marriage for same-sex couples: “One is to get rid of civil partnership for same-sex couples. I think it’s a mistake – the idea is that there’s something tainted about civil partnership, it’s the inferior institution.”

However, governments were left with a situation whereby same-sex couples had two options while heterosexual couples had one.

“That’s completely unsustainable. It’s got to be two choices for all couples or one. That’s equality,” he said. If Ireland voted to introduce civil marriage for same-sex couples it would be voluntary and politicians should not suggest that “we have to”, he added.

“It’s completely voluntary. The beauty of the European Convention system is that you can be a beneficiary and a contributor, a student or a teacher, teaching other countries through the case law of the court. Ireland will go from being a beneficiary country to a contributor. Ireland will eventually help people in Italy, Greece, perhaps even in Russia,” Prof Wintemute said.

Once introduced, legislation would prevent regression in Ireland, he said: “If there is a future traditional family values party that comes into power, they will face opposition in trying to take things ‘backwards’.”