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Ireland Introduces Gay "Civil Partnerships" Bill as Demand from Homosexuals Drops

By Hilary White

DUBLIN, June 24, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The government of Ireland has introduced a "civil partnerships" bill that would, if passed, give legal recognition to homosexual liaisons. The bill would also give recognition to the relationships of cohabiting heterosexual couples.

"This legislation is keenly awaited by many cohabiting couples, and will be of great benefit both to same-sex and opposite-sex cohabiting couples," said Dermot Ahern, the Irish justice minister. "As well as providing for Civil Partnership Registration for same-sex couples, it will also provide certainty as to the status of cohabitation agreements."

The Civil Partnership Bill proposes to establish registration of same-sex domestic partnerships that will offer legal protection for shared property and provide for the dissolution of such partnerships in a manner similar to legal divorce.

A similar bill was rejected in February 2007. At that time, however, Parliament pledged to bring another bill forward that would stand up to a constitutional challenge.

In January 2006, the Irish Equality Authority suggested that there is a legal requirement for the Irish Government to provide the same level of rights for homosexuals as in Northern Ireland, where, as part of the UK, civil partnerships have been available since December 2005. But in a ruling a year later, in December 2006, the Irish High Court held that marriage as defined in the Irish Constitution was between a man and a woman and that there was no breach of rights in the refusal to recognise foreign same-sex marriages.

A recent survey found that 84 percent of Irish people support civil "marriage" or civil partnerships for same-sex partnerings, with 58 percent supporting full "marriage" rights in registry offices.
 
Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph reports that figures from the Office for National Statistics show that UK same-sex civil partnerships fell by 46 percent in 2007. In England and Wales, civil partnerships fell by 47 percent in 2007 to 7,929. The figure in Scotland fell by 34 percent in the same period.

These figures support a recent statement from a Romanian pro-family group that said the push for same-sex "marriage" is a cynical political ploy to disestablish natural marriage as the foundation of civil society.

In a letter of protest to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), the Alliance of Romania's Families cited the sudden drop off of "gay marriages" and registered civil unions as evidence that the whole issue is just a political "fad".

The Alliance wrote that the massive international campaign, including that by PACE, has nothing to do with human rights. Instead, it is a matter of "social engineering, intolerance, imposing uniformity of thought, eliminating dissent and nonconformist thought and expression, imposing politically correct speech codes, the very deinstitutionalization of family and marriage."

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