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Wednesday July 14, 2010


Civil Partnership Passes Irish Senate: Will Create “Social Chaos” Says Catholic Union Chair

By Hilary White

DUBLIN, July 14, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Civil Partnership Bill, which was passed by the Irish Upper House yesterday, will create ripples of change throughout Irish society and end in “social chaos,” a UK barrister warned last week.

Under the proposed law, as in the UK, registered civil partnerships are effectively equivalent to marriage. Separations must be litigated in divorce courts, and the partners are treated as married by banks, government departments and officials and by the tax and benefits systems.

Jamie Bogle, a barrister of the Middle Temple in London and chairman of the Catholic Union of Great Britain, told LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) in an interview last week that the passage of the bill would have wide-ranging deleterious effects on Irish society, as similar legislation has in England, Wales and Scotland.

As a principle, he said, once laws begin to equate the “fruitless” (that is childless) relationships of homosexuals with natural marriage, “You are deriving the law from a fundamentally false premise … which denies that there is any natural complementarity between the sexes.”

The logic of civil partnership laws, he said, is a recipe for “moral anarchy and chaos.”

“Once you have created a law that considers marriage as merely a partnership for community living and recreational sex, why not have polygamy? Why not marry a dog for that matter? Whatever turns you on, go for it.”

Although the Irish bill does not include a provision allowing homosexual partners to adopt each other’s children, homosexualist activists have set their sights on adoption as the next goal.

In the UK, although the provision is not present in the civil partnership legislation, homosexuals have for many years had the legal ability to adopt children. Bogle warned against the Irish adopting such a law, saying that these measures are nothing more than a gigantic social experiment carried out at the expense of children.

The issue of children’s needs and rights, Bogle said, “simply isn’t addressed” in such legislation.

“They just assume there is no harm to the child in an unorthodox relationship, outside a normal marriage with a parent of each sex. But that is an assumption too far. Where is the research? Where is the evidence, the track record for showing that there’s no harm to children from being raised in these situations?

“The answer is there is none. So effectively, this is an experimentation with the nation’s children.”

Bogle said the debate ignores the central question. “Even if you think marriage is nothing more than a temporary cohabiting relationship for recreational sex, you’ve still got to ask yourself who is going to raise the next generation of children.”

The state, he said, has an interest in ensuring children are protected. “Should the state just say, we don’t care how children are brought up?”

The lack of legal curiosity about the effects of homosexual adoption on children, he said, is surprising given the current climate in Ireland of policing against child abuse.

“You would have thought that one of the first questions they would have asked is what are the effects of these relationships going to be on the children who are brought up in them. They simply don’t ask the question.”

These omissions, Bogle continued, “do tend to show that the primary consideration of those who are campaigning for a change in the law, including the government itself, is not so much the rights of children so much as the rights of people who wish to enter into these relationships.”

Some members of the Irish House of Commons (Dail) and Senate (Seanad) have also expressed concerns about the bill’s provisions allowing criminal charges to be laid against any civil marriage registrar who refuses to carry out a ceremony for homosexuals. It proposes a maximum penalty of six months in prison and/or a €2000 (US $2500) fine. During debates on the bill, senators and MPs called for freedom for conscientious objectors.

Senator Jim Walsh said that the lack of a conscience clause will move the country “to a totalitarian society which certainly many of us, particularly liberals, would argue against if it were impinging upon their beliefs.” Senator John Paul Phelan, from the opposition party Fine Gael, said, “Criminalizing registrars for non-performance of their function is not a correct step in any legislation.”

After the Seanad debate was cut short after only two days using a special type of motion not used in decades, Senator Ronan Mullen, who led the opposition to the bill, said, “It seems that vital legislation affecting family life and conscientious objection in Irish law is to be accorded less priority than the need of politicians to get out of Leinster House by 6 o’clock on a Thursday evening.

“The Government was happy to have a cozy debate in the Dail when there was no substantial opposition and no amendments. But they ran away from thorough scrutiny by the Seanad of the various unjust proposals contained within the Civil Partnership Bill.”

Read related LSN coverage:

Bill Forcing Compliance with Gay Ceremonies Passes Irish Lower House

https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jul/10070501.html

Irish Politicians to Catholic Church: You Have No Business in Public Debate

https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jun/10062206.html

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