Sir, – Jennifer O'Connell ("There should be no right to intolerance", Life & Style, April 6th) writes that "Ours will be the first country in the world to hold a referendum on gay marriage".
A constitutional referendum was held in Slovenia on March 25th, 2012, and the result was 54.55 per cent in favour of opposite-sex marriage, another was held in Croatia on December 1st, 2013, and the result was 65.87 per cent in favour of opposite-sex marriage, and a third referendum was held in Slovakia on February 7th, 2015, and the result was 94.50 per cent in favour of opposite-sex marriage.
Have all these countries become intolerant or is it a form of intolerance not to recognise that other people can and do choose differently from us? – Yours, etc,
SEAMUS O’CALLAGHAN,
Carlow.
Sir, – Brian Dineen's statement (April 7th) that the law on prohibited degrees of relationship will continue to apply if the referendum to redefine marriage is carried, while literally correct, is, in the context, misleading.
I do not accuse Mr Dineen of being intentionally misleading.
The law on prohibited degrees of relationship will continue to apply – the difficulty is that the law is cast in terms of a list of female relations with whom a male may not contract marriage and a list of male relations with whom a female may not contract marriage. There is no prohibited male relationship on the male list nor a prohibited female relationship on the female list.
The wording of the proposed amendment is self-executing – if passed, it requires no further legislation to take effect.
As far as I can see, no attention whatsoever has been paid to prohibited degrees of relationship.
It was only on March 10th, not far short of two months after publication of the Bill for the proposed constitutional amendment, that there was published (with notable lack of fanfare) not a Bill, nor even a scheme of a Bill, but the “draft” of a scheme of a marriage Bill.
Apart from a few tidying up provisions, such as substituting “spouse” for “husband” or “wife” in a number of pieces of legislation – arguably unnecessary in view of the self-executing nature of the proposed constitutional amendment – about the only substantive provision is a proposal to legislate for the extension of the prohibited degrees of consanguinity and affinity to the “equivalent degree” in respect of same-sex marriage.
The “draft” does not indicate how the position in the interval between any adoption by the people of the proposed amendment and the enactment of any Bill in terms of the “draft scheme” is to be dealt with.
The “draft scheme” carries the endearing notation that it will be “subject to change consequent on formal drafting”.
In other words, sure if anybody identifies any further unintended consequences, can’t we try and deal with them after we’ve persuaded the people into adopting the constitutional amendment without any analysis of the consequences of the proposed change, let alone anything as consonant with the principles of good governance as a Green Paper, followed by a White Paper?
The more interesting analytical question, of course, is why the prohibited degrees should be extended to same-sex relationships.
After all, one of the fundamental pillars of the arguments of the proponents of the referendum is that there is no especial link between marriage and the procreation of children, the principal reason for the existence in the first place of prohibited degrees.
Not to mention one of the other fundamental pillars, that model of deep analysis, the undigested mantra, “who could possibly want to prevent any two people in love from being entitled to marry?” – Yours, etc,
BRYAN SHERIDAN,
Dublin 18.