Cardinal Brady's wish to allow civil registrars an opt-out of registering gay partnerships is hard to fathom writes PAUL KENNY.
THE PRIMATE of All Ireland, Cardinal Seán Brady, recently denounced “an alarming attack on the fundamental principle of freedom of religion and conscience”.
Was he referring to a Government crackdown on organised religion – Soviet-era church demolitions, perhaps? Does he fear a return to the time of the Penal Laws, with their priest-hangings, hidden Mass rocks and murderous patrols of British Redcoats?
Not so: his alarm has been caused by the Government’s proposal to allow some basic legal protections to same-sex couples in a “civil partnership” scheme.
On another day, I’d follow the above with impassioned arguments on how partnership is a half-baked, demeaning offer to Ireland’s gay community; that it consigns same-sex couples to a second-class status; ignores the rights (and the very existence) of children raised by those couples; and that 2009 is as good a time as any to allow gay couples the fundamental right of access to civil marriage in a civil registry office.
I do indeed believe all of those things, but Cardinal Brady’s comments at St John’s Cathedral, Limerick, last Saturday raise
issues that are pertinent whether gay couples achieve equality in marriage, or have to settle for second best.
The specific cause of the cardinal’s alarm is the fact that there is no provision in the Civil Partnership Bill for civil registrars (who will perform the “partnering” ceremony) to opt out of dealing with gay couples. Initially, I dismissed it as a non-issue. After all, we can surely assume that public servants do in fact hold to an ethos of public service; that they have the professionalism to leave those niggling private prejudices (of which we’re all guilty) at home when they come to work; and that they’d never tell a pair of blushing brides to go home because, well, all of the registrars on duty today have a deep faith that you are objectively disordered and that your relationship is an intrinsic moral evil.
I’d also sincerely hope that the registrar’s employer – ultimately, the Irish State – would flatly refuse to countenance public servants using their private prejudices to pick and choose which members of the public are worthy of service.
However, it’s likely that there’s a registrar out there who could be persuaded to martyr himself for the sake of a test case. So, as a thought experiment, let’s consider how such a situation might actually come about.
Firstly, a registrar would have to decide that they were going to start bringing the strictures of their faith to work. I say strictures, because bringing faith to work doesn’t seem to raise any particular problems in and of itself – indeed, many faithful would say that there is no separating the believer from the belief. The practical thou-shalts and thou-shalt-nots, however, are another issue; by their nature, they have practical effects.
They would then have to allow one of those practical effects to prevent them from fulfilling their public service role. Specifically, this would mean that, of all the various types of people who come before a civil registrar to make their vows, it’s the two grooms or two brides who are untouchable. At this point it might be reasonable to wonder whether this actually negates the idea of “public” service.
The most striking part of the scenario above is not that some religious folk might want to avoid dealing with any gay folk, but rather that other types of “folk” seem to slip under the radar. According to the latest figures, about 20 per cent of Irish couples now tie the knot in a civil ceremony. It’s likely that a fair number of those couples do so because they either don’t want, or can’t have, a religious wedding. The reasons probably vary – the people involved may have been divorced; the couple may have been cohabiting before marriage; they may be a mixed-faith couple; they may even be atheists. Each of the reasons mentioned can disqualify one from marrying in the cardinal’s church, yet such couples have been happily marrying before civil registrars since the dawn of the State and before.
It’s also likely that the religious composition of staff at civil registry offices accords generally with the religious make-up of Irish people as a whole: mostly Catholic, ranging from the merely cultural to the deeply devout. The deeply devout should, I assume, view a second marriage as anathema – perhaps even adulterous; yet I’ve never heard of a civil registrar suing for a religious right to shun newlyweds-to-be just because the groom had a failed marriage in his past.
Why would a public servant rise above his moral discomfort for a divorced person, but claim conscientious objector status when faced with a same-sex couple? If the only religious stricture he’ll actually stand up for is one that “forces” him to refuse service to those two blushing brides, then it’s very hard not to conclude that religious faith is not actually his motivation. Such a faith is nothing more than a cloak under which to hide an otherwise naked prejudice toward gay people.
Some may think that’s an appropriate accessory for a public servant to bring to work.
I don’t.
Paul Kenny is communication officer at Noise, a gay rights campaigning organisation based in Dublin – www.lgbtnoise.ie