Questions & Answers Segment On Civil Partnerships

national | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis Friday November 14, 2008 15:57 by Vincent Devine

Rebuttal of ideas expressed by panel members.

I am writing in order to rebut some of the arguments presented in the recent “Questions & Answers” segment on civil partnerships. While the standard of discourse on such programs is generally not something I concern myself with, the overwhelmingly obvious lack of logical rigour on this occasion provided the necessary impetus. Some of the points made need to be challenged as they are in some cases factually erroneous, and in others intellectually unsound.

The discussion focussed on the rights or wrongs of conceding equal marriage rights to same sex couples.

Maureen Gaffney, Chair of the National Economic & Social Forum, prefaced her remarks by saying that children fare best when brought up in a marriage between their biological parents. As a psychologist she claimed this as empirically derived scientific fact. Even if this were true it would only be statistically so, and therefore have nothing to say on the justice, fairness, or morality of the question. Statistically speaking children in Foxrock will fare out better than those from Ballymun but nobody suggests that poor people shouldn’t be granted equal marriage rights.
Gaffney’s characterisation of the scientific research as being decisive in this manner is false. There are many studies which would contradict her claim completely, and highlight other variables as being more influential on a child, such as the parent’s income, education, psychological well being etc. Carol Trust, Director of the American National Association of Social Workers puts it well:

“Anyone who wishes to examine the 20 years of peer-reviewed studies on the emotional, cognitive and behavioural outcomes of children of gay and lesbian parents will find not one shred of evidence that children are harmed by their parents' sexual orientation.
The empirical and clinical evidence suggesting same-sex parents are equivalent to heterosexual parents in their ability to care for children and provide loving homes is so compelling that there is a growing consensus among legal and child welfare experts that there is no rational basis to deny adoption to gay and lesbian couples solely on the basis of their sexual orientation.”

David Quinn’s main argument was that the function of marriage is to ensure the continuation of society through propagation. We should not encourage, therefore, deviations from the “gold standard” norm of mother and father. Proceeding from this premise he goes on to claim that the welfare and rights of children would be denigrated by the legal recognition of same-sex family’s: a classic straw man argument. This rhetorical jujitsu reframes the debate away from the rights of the homosexual minority to a putative attack on those of children. The civil-rights of these two groups, children and gays, are not contradictory.

The deeper implication of Quinn’s argument is equally as fallacious - unless we ensure that heterosexual marriage is privileged then we risk a critical breakdown in social continuation. An audience member went further, adding that society would ‘wither away’ without the promotion and advancement of heterosexual relationships. So what are we to believe, unless the state preserves the sanctity of penile-vaginal coitus, we’re all going to turn gay? A sentiment oft uttered by the plebs down my local boozer. ‘Wouldn’t it be marvellous to turn queer Pat’. ‘Oh, Indeed and it would, but sure there’s no financial incentive’.

Thankfully what is in danger of becoming both withered and further etiolated is the unfortunate residue of dogma which still obtains in Irish society, and which retards the still burgeoning progressive tendencies of civil rights and social justice.