Organisers of a demonstration against the Government's refusal to lift the ban on same sex marriage are expecting thousands of supporters to join them in Dublin city centre this weekend.
Gay rights organisation Noise is calling on hetrosexual members of the public to support the march on Sunday and is hoping the demonstration to be the largest for a single gay rights issue in the history of the State.
Demonstrators will call on the Government to remove the ban on same sex marriage immediately and put an end to what they describe as "the long-standing discrimination against gay and lesbian people in Ireland."
"This is not just a gay rights issue – it is a human rights issue. The right to marry is ensrhined in Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but gay people in Ireland are currently denied that right," said Noise organiser, Noelle Moran.
"Sexual orientation is not a lifestyle choice – you have no more power to choose it then to choose the colour of your skin, and it is just as wrong to discriminate on this basis as it is to discriminate on the basis of race," she added.
Amnesty Ireland, USI (the Union of Students in Ireland) along with many gay community groups, such as MarriagEquality, the NLGF (National Lesbian and Gay Federation), Greenbow, the youth group BelongTO and sOUTh community group from Waterford, will participate in the protest.
The march will begin at City Hall, Dame Street at 1.30pm on Sunday, and will culminate in a rally outside the Department of Justice on St Stephens’s Green at 2pm.