Why I will be voting no on the women’s referendum
ON March 8 we will vote on two referendums to amend our Constitution. One, on Article 41.2, removes the State’s special protection for mothers who choose to stay at home. The second extends the definition of family to include the vague concept of something founded on other ‘durable relationships’.
It doesn’t take a genius to predict the myriad legal and economic consequences on family law, succession rights, immigration, tax and citizenship if we open this particular Pandora’s Box. The Government is asking us to play a game of constitutional blindman’s buff based on some ill-defined notion of ‘durable relationships’. The phrase is capable of so many different interpretations that it is going to be left – once again – for the courts to sort out.
Interestingly, while I was looking for some sort of definition I came across a court case based on the Justice Minister’s refusal to allow a non-EU man to be treated as a permitted family member on the basis of his ‘durable relationship’ with an EU citizen. The minister pleaded that the term ‘durable relationship’ has ‘nowhere been defined’. Yet here we are being asked to put it in our Constitution.
Meanwhile, the National Women’s Council and some prominent politicians are portraying Article 41.2 as if a patriarchal State were keeping women in the home. It does nothing of the sort. What it says – in admittedly archaic language – is that women should not be forced to work through economic necessity, an entirely different thing.
Over recent decades, legislation has brought many changes protecting non-marital relationships and children, including cohabiting and same-sex marriage legislation, and changes to inheritance laws. Yet the message coming from certain quarters is clear: only those who are not ‘progressive‘ – dinosaurs in other words – baulk at the notion of ‘durable relationships’ being inserted into our Constitution.
Integration Minister Roderic O’Gorman said as much when he threatened State-funded ‘progressive’ NGOs that they need to ‘explain themselves’ if they don’t campaign for a ‘yes’ vote. Ironically, one word from the patriarch and they all fall into line.
When people who actually know what they are talking about, including former attorney general Michael McDowell and a female former Supreme Court justice, say there are good reasons for the existing provisions in the Constitution, I take notice. Apart from ideological gesturing, these amendments would serve no positive purpose. But the downside is existing laws could be invalidated in future.
That is why I am voting No on March 8. Meanwhile, I say the Yes side needs to quit the scaremongering. If that’s all they have to present as an argument, they may find themselves on the losing side.