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The other day I received a really interesting email about a protest by Noise against the fact that Ireland's proposed law for civil partnerships falls short of giving concrete rights to gay parents.  Noise and many other LGBT groups are deeply annoyed that the legislation is likely to create a sort of second-class partnership type that will not stand up in a court or even in civil society where issues regarding parenting are concerned.

Meanwhile, wealthy public menace Declan Ganley, now known to be huge money bags behind the anti-Lisbon campaign and now having transformed this campaign into what I suspect will become a deeply regressive, politically retrograde and menacing political party, has thrown his cards on the table on the issue in a recent issue of Hot Press.  In the context that Libertas is now a party, strongly backed by the Christian conservative right, that the original call for suggestions for partnerships in Ireland received 4000 responses, the vast majority of which were resounding negative regarding any kind of proposal on the issue, and that the current government is now in a case of severe crisis due to very severe mismanagement of the economy, not suggestion that even the original civil partnership proposal is deeply under threat?

Worse still, my big fear is that any kind of LGBT opposition to the current bill would no doubt lend massive credence to a right-wing claim of outright public opposition to gay civil partnership per se, and would totally undermine the "yes but not enough" position currently taken by Noise.

In this case, I am guessing that the current proposals, unless supported conclusively by the opposition (which is politically unlikely at present), would already have a hard time getting past rural backbenchers already put out by pensioners who nearly lost their medical cards (who incidentally, now appear to be a motivated political force, and kiss my ass if you think they will lend their support as a whole to a progressive campaign for equality for gays - they are far more likely to join the cacophony of opposition, for whatever reason).  Even without the backing of the main stakeholder, the gay community, this bill is far from being passed.

The naive belief that if we reject this we might get something better should look at the long running abortion question - 15 years after the "X" case, despite several referenda, abortion remains outlawed in Ireland.  Rejecting various alternative options didn't "open up" legislative options, all they did was undermine any kind of possible consensus that might have either thrown out the most tight restrictions OR opened them up in a limited fashion.  It "wasn't liberal enough" for the pro-choice campaign, and "too liberal" for the pro-life campaign.  And since the pro-life campaign still have the benefit of previous highly restrictive laws, in the medium term they have done very well and managed to keep Ireland away from having any kind of legal abortion services at all.

This is exactly where I suspect Noise will find themselves in 5 years time, if this law is not at least welcomed, albeit with dismay about its restrictedness.

I think Noise needs to take a far more strategic approach in the light of potential political instability, especially from backbenchers, and against the likelihood of the entire proposal disappearing for many years.  We need to go back to the drawing board and find a way to push through this change temporarily but still keep the needs of gay parents as a live issue for the future.  Rejecting this outright will leave us empty handed for many years to come