According to Green Party member Ciarán Cuffe on Twitter, the Civil Partnership Bill is due to reach committee stage on 24th March 2010. And some people are durn unhappy about it. LGBT Noise have sent out the following APB on their Facebook page and mailing list. Get writing! _________ The Civil Partnership Bill is currently making its way through the many stages and committees of the Oireachtas. Noise have been informed that the Justice Committee have been inundated with letters from ultra-conservative letter writers expressing opposition to gay people being granted any form of rights. Many conservatives are describing Civil Partnership as being the same as marriage; this is far from true. It lacks a great deal of the rights, responsibilities and protections of marriage. Crucially, it... Similar posts

I’d been intending to write about the civil partnership bill currently before the Dáil for a few weeks now, and reading William Quill’s take on the issue this morning has finally prompted me to get off my ass and actually do it. Let me begin by saying that as a straight white male who grew up in relatively comfortable surroundings, I’ve never really experienced the sensation or feeling that I am or was being denied a civil or human right. I have no point of reference from which to draw understanding or empathy with those members of our society who feel that the rest of us are unjustly excluding them in law from an experience or right they feel should be theirs. Being a member of the demographic that I am, I do not anticipate the experience any time soon. This summer, I... Similar posts

The below is a speech I delivered to the Law Society in TCD last night.  I was speaking on behalf of the NLGF, so the position is not quite one that I would completely agree with.  However, I was very pleased with the speech generally, and got quite an ego boost from praise I received from Senator Norris and Gerard Hogan S.C. Distinguished guests, Chairperson, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Law Society, Ladies and Gentlemen I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak here tonight on behalf of the National Lesbian and Gay Federation, and to propose the motion that “This House believes that the Civil Partnership Bill 2009 entrenches second class citizenship”. To begin this debate, we must define what we understand by the term citizenship.  A citizen is a full participating member... Similar posts

Our friends at MarriagEquality have been working away at trying to make some sense out of the Civil Partnership Bill for all of us  and so they decided to ask a barristor to have a look.  They asked important questions like what the Bill will mean for same-sex couples and those with children if it becomes law in its current state?  Below is a very interesting summary of their findings. The context On 24 June 2009, the Civil Partnership Bill was presented by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform as its first stage to becoming law. Over the coming months, TDs will debate it in the Dáil (second stage) and at Committee level (third stage). It is at these stages that TDs can try to make changes to what it says in the Bill. There are two more stages after that, including being... Similar posts