Family & Life

Justice Department's Lame Excuses for Civil Partnerships : 1st Dec 09

Justice Department's Lame Excuses for Civil Partnerships

Several of our supporters have passed on to us what appears to be the stock response being issued by the Department of Justice to citizens expressing concerns about the proposed Civil Partnership Bill. The arguments put forward by the Bill's sponsors in the Department reflect the flawed reasoning that runs through the Bill and in some respects are entirely fallacious.

The idea that, because Civil Partnership is a secular concept, it does not affect marriage is absurd. Civil Marriage is also a secular concept and it is precisely civil marriage that is threatened by this Bill (No one supposes that the Bill will affect, for example, the Catholic Church's teaching on sacramental marriage). Civil Partnerships, as defined in the Bill, are modelled closely on marriage. This is abundantly evident from even the most cursory reading. It is simply not possible to create rival institutions to marriage on substantially the same legal footing and pretend that marriage is still special and is enjoying the protection that the Constitution demands for it. The argument offered by the Department is part of an (unlawful) attempt to restrict the Constitutional protection afforded by Article 41.3 to the word 'marriage' rather than to the reality that the word signifies.

The thinking of the Department officials seems to be informed by a caricature of those who object to the Bill and their supposed objections. This is particularly evident in the claim that because no Registrar has objected on grounds of conscience to registering the civil marriage of a divorced person, no such problems are forseeable in relation to Civil Partnerships. It appears that these officials consider that the only objections to the Bill could be from those who adhere strictly to the traditional Christian teaching on marriage. The possibility that there could be objections independent of this to an attack on civil marriage and the contribution it makes to the common good appears not to have occurred to them.

The Department’s explanation of the mechanism whereby it would become an offence to ‘discriminate’ against someone on the grounds of their ‘civil status’, may look tidy from an administrative point of view, but it makes a fundamental error. No reasonable person would wish to discriminate unjustly against another person on the grounds of a characteristic of that person. Making ‘civil status’ a protected status under equality legislation, however, alters the logic on which that legislation is based. It is no longer to be about accepting other people and respecting their dignity as human persons. Now the law would force people to accept, not other people but the institution of civil partnership, which this law would create. There are ample rational grounds for finding this proposed institution objectionable and wishing not to be involved with it, whether for religious or other reasons or conscience. It is shocking that so coercive a civil law would even be considered in a free society.

The final paragraph of the Department’s letter suggests a range of hypothetical unintended outcomes without the slightest bit of evidence that these are remotely probable. Many of them could, if the government wished, be addressed by other, more modest, legislation. Indeed the whole question of addressing the legitimate rights of homosexual citizens could be addressed without creating the institution of Civil Partnerships. That being so, it appears that the government is pursuing this particular course for purely ideological reasons. Family & Life/Patrick Carr.

The letter from the Department is available to read here: CLICK TO READ MORE.....

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Family & Life

Justice Department's Lame Excuses for Civil Partnerships : 1st Dec 09

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