Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Senator McDowell earlier referred to Woody Allen. I know Woody Allen also said that 90% of success is showing up. Would that it were the case that our presence here today could actually get the Government to think again about what it is doing. I will have to see, but I have my doubts. Senator McDowell and I may have different views on what precisely marriage is. We certainly were not on the same side of the marriage referendum. He would probably disagree with me, to some degree and in some ways, that referendum was the first step in the deconstruction of marriage and what it means in our society. Whether I am right or wrong in that, I think we can both agree - I do not want to put words in his mouth - that marriage is certainly being deconstructed here. It is a bizarre situation that the Minister can come into this Chamber and tell us not to worry because they are not taking out the State's pledge to guard the institution of marriage and protect it from attack. In fact, the only protection being left to marriage after they are finished with their work with this amendment is to create a disincentive for anybody to get into it because of the difficulty of getting out of it. Gone will be any discussion of what marriage might convey and deliver for society as an institution.

I have heard a lot of talk from friends and colleagues today and in the past couple of days about the past. There is a desire to use the stigmatising behaviour that went on in the past and the character and colour of our society in the past, to somehow create momentum about the need to change our Constitution. I say the following with great respect to my friends, Senators McGreehan and Ruane. I think there is a misunderstanding of the past going on here when people are overly inclined to excoriate every aspect of it. The truth is that while Christian ideas certainly contributed to the State's understanding of marriage, the definition of marriage and the provisions made for marriage in the Constitution, those ideas went far beyond marriage. People take many values for granted today such as looking out for the vulnerable in our society and caring for the migrant, the most dispossessed and the least among us. Though people may or may not have religious faith, so many of those ideas are effectively rooted in Christian culture in the western world. That the idea of marriage was recognised by the State as an institution because of what it could deliver for the upbringing of children is no different. Certainly, at a time when there were no laws in the State, there were canon laws centuries ago the Christian church was involved in articulating in terms of the common good. People should be careful what they wish for if they want to excise any Christian remnant from the values of our Constitution and society, because they might lose an awful lot of things they cherish.

Another thing to say is that it is easy to excoriate every aspect of the past. However, when you look in finer detail, you see quite a degree of enlightenment and goodness in the way many things were viewed. I will give one example. The late Judge Rory O'Hanlon became a bête noirefor those who disliked his philosophical conservatism, not so much off the Bench but after his life on the Bench. I hope I recall correctly from my law studies. Senator McDowell will confirm whether it is true or not. What was interesting about him was that he had enlightened views about the wrongness of illegitimacy and about the rights of children in those situations. Too much appeal to our personal situation and too much excoriation of the past in broad brush strokes misses a lot of the detail that can perhaps help us to make wise decisions now. I could talk about my own personal experience of growing up in a marital family and seeing a relationship that was not perfect, but by its aspiration to permanence and the presence of both my father and mother I found myself to be extremely lucky. I would want that for as many people as possible. In saying that I am not judging any other person's experience.

When we talk about the Constitution and what it might promote as an ideal, it is wrong to suggest that is some kind of judgment on those whose situations are different from what the Constitution traditionally viewed as normative. This is the other misunderstanding, not just of the past, but of the genius of Bunreacht na hÉireann. It did and does set an ideal. It sets a direction for things. It seeks to link the understanding of family with marriage. The genius of our Constitution is that it has space, and always did have space, for the provision of social protection outside of that. Provision in law for de facto families - the very understanding in the courts of de factofamilies - was never undermined by the provisions of the Constitution. That is the genius and generosity of our Constitution.It may very well set a direction or set forth an ideal - and, as I showed yesterday and will, I hope, show again today, it is an evidence-based ideal when talking about the value of marriage for society but it does not denigrate. People need not feel judged by the constitutional ideal of things, particularly when it has always been clear that the Constitution is capable of being interpreted and legislation is possible and did, and does, happen to vindicate the rights of people in their individual situations. We saw that as late as yesterday in the O'Meara decision. Therefore, we need a greater degree of honesty as to what the Constitution is and is not.

I will submit something else. The Constitution at present "pledges ... to guard with special care the institution of Marriage, on which the Family [with a capital F] is founded, and to protect it against attack". I disagree with Senator Ruane when she says the Constitution does not recognise anything else as a family. The proper interpretation of that clause is that, institutionally speaking, the Constitution recognises the link between marriage and family in broad, general and societal terms, but it was never unconstitutional to see situations that were not in their individual cases founded on marriage as not being families. That is, I think, the true meaning of the Constitution, that, institutionally, yes, the family is founded on marriage, but that does not deny the existence of many different types of families. I do not think anybody ever seriously understood it to do so. Over time, there were distinctions in certain times and places, in particular cases, distinctions that were justified or, when they were not justified, repealed. If, however, the House thinks about whether in fact it was necessary to amend the Constitution to secure any of the benefits for, for want of a better phrase, extramarital children, it will immediately see what I am talking about, that is, that the Constitution has flexibility. There needs to be more generosity towards what our Constitution is and what it seeks to achieve. I use the word "deconstructing" because, notwithstanding the comprehensive nature of what the Constitution is and can be, the Government and the Minister today are proposing to deconstruct and to decouple. This is a referendum proposal that would decouple the family from marriage and decouple marriage from couples because it is not even clear that more than two people may be the basis for founding a family. We have heard from other speakers about the chaotic unpredictability of the phrase "durable relationships" and what it may or may not mean now and into the future. Maybe more relevant to what I will say later on the other referendum proposal, the Government is seeking to decouple care from that given by fathers and mothers within the home specifically and to take away the specific honouring of that.

Senator Ruane does not need to convince me that men should be made to meet their obligations to provide maintenance and to provide for their children. I would probably go further than many Members and say that anybody who fathers a child in any circumstance, donor or otherwise, should have a legal responsibility for the provision for his genetic children. We will talk about that, no doubt, another day, but let us not excoriate arguments simply because they do not chime with people's personal experiences and preferences. Let us look at things in an evidential way.

My amendments seek to get rid of the addition of a proposed strange wording to the Constitution, that of "durable relationships", and to provide for an alternative using the wording of the Committee on Gender Equality, a committee which, by the way, refused to take the help of my colleague, Senator Keogan, when offered. My amendments seek to remove the Government's intention to delink marriage from family and from the concept of family. We should not underestimate the extent of the Government's plan to undermine the definition of "family". If it really wanted simply to include what we can generally describe as non-marital families, it could have done so just as my amendment proposes, but it went for the all-embracing option by which a family will mean almost any durable grouping, as marriage likely fits this new category as well, and thus, as a concept, becomes empty of meaning.

That is not an accident. It may have seemed strange to people yesterday that I referred to communism but the truth is that there is an intellectual movement behind the changes proposed here, and I say that with great respect personally for those who are in the vanguard of it but with no fear of naming it and naming precisely what is going on. For neo-communists and the far-left, families are and always have been institutions that perpetuate inequalities, re-enforce gender roles, reproduce class distinctions and re-enforce so-called patriarchal norms. That is their perspective, so modern communists, or indeed progressives, emphasise instead of family the importance of community and collective responsibility in raising and caring for children. This is what I was saying yesterday. What is really at the back of this, in part at the very least, is a desire to supplement or for the State and statism to supplant true respect for families in their constitution and autonomy. The idea is to move away from the nuclear family model and promote a more communal approach to childcare and support. Much of this overlaps with the progressive model of family espoused by An Taoiseach recently, a model which, to quote him, respects "fluidity, diversity and personal freedom". In short, despite the apparent attractiveness of some of those words, what is on offer here is that any grouping is to be a family, and that is exactly what the term "durable relationships" captures. There is no mention of binary and no mention of what durable might mean, other than we know our Supreme Court does not take it to mean lasting, and "lasting" is the word the Taoiseach used in explaining the referendum. Family is to be shorn of its definitional link to marriage. Marriage can give rise to a family, fair enough, but so can any grouping involving any number of adults, it seems, that is, whatever our Supreme Court can tolerate whenever the test cases are brought. This is the pig in the poke that the public are being asked to vote for. The far-left fringe of this Government - it does exist and, though they may be very nice people, their ideology should be clearly named and identified - does not want any legal recognition of gender difference. They want to abolish the word "woman" as far as they can from the Constitution. I take Senator Ruane's point that it is there in some residual form, but it is being taken away where it matters, it could be argued.