Nothing as It Seems

In February the Minister for Health, Leo Varadkar, announced that the Cabinet are preparing new laws to regulate assisted human reproduction and surrogacy. At present there exists a legal vacuum, but the proposed Bill for Assisted Human Reproduction and Stem Cell Research will work towards regulating surrogacy and associated practices for the first time in Ireland. It is understood that legislation will only permit altruistic surrogacy , but not commercial surrogacy . Other countries like Denmark and Britain already permit altruistic surrogacy, but ban commercial surrogacy, while France, Germany, Austria, Spain, Portugal and Italy ban the practice completely. Surrogacy is an arrangement where a woman becomes pregnant with the intention of transferring over the baby to someone else sometime after giving birth. In cases of altruistic surrogacy, it is usually a relative or close friend who volunteers to be the surrogate mother. Generally, infertile couples are the group most li...

In 2001 the Netherlands made history by becoming the first country in the world to legalise same sex marriage (SSM); this feat was soon followed by their closest neighbour, Belgium. Since then several other countries have also amended their laws to permit same-sex couples to marry; they include: Spain, Canada, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Iceland, Argentina, Denmark, Brazil, France, Uruguay, New Zealand, Great Britain, and Luxembourg. In addition, 36 states in the US, at present, allow SSM and over 70 percent of its citizens live in places where gay couples can marry.  There’s a good chance Ireland will soon also join this list. In December the Government announced that a referendum on legalising SSM will take place sometime in May. Public opinion in support of the move has remained steady over the past couple of years: one Irish Times /Ipsos MRBI poll taken just before the Cabinet announcement said that 71 percent support SSM and just 17 percent are agains...

With Ireland set to have a referendum next year, where citizens will eventually make the decision whether or not to introduce same-sex marriage, it is likely we can expect further heated debate to take place. Earlier this year, to be sure, we got a flavour of how forceful things can get: RTÉ, the national broadcaster, paid out €85,000 to writer and journalist John Waters and five others over a claim on the Saturday Night Show that they were homophobic.   In a detailed article for Village magazine last month, Waters subsequently declared he isn't against same-sex marriage for any theological reason or because he considers it socially destructive, but for it potentially breaking “the maintenance of blood link between parent and child.” Granted, his response to some of the controversial remarks he made about gay marriage and adoption in an interview with a college newspaper a few years ago, however, were rather limited. Waters says he resigned from the Irish Times ...

A version of this article was printed in  Humanism Ireland , Jan-Feb, Vol. 144 (2014) About half a century ago, homosexuality was illegal everywhere in the world, with the exception of a dozen or so countries. It wasn't until the 1960s and 1970s that the gay rights movement, supported by the principle of human rights, accelerated. Today homosexuality is legal in about 120 countries—though still banned in several places—and some have even moved towards legally recognising same-sex marriage. In 2001 the first laws enabling same-sex marriage occurred in the Netherlands; since then, fourteen other countries (including Argentina, Belgium, and South Africa) and several other regional jurisdictions have also introduced same-sex marriage. Homosexuality in the Republic of Ireland was finally decriminalised in June 1993. Despite a slow start, the trajectory of gay rights moved rather fast, with the  Civil Partnership and Certain Rights and Obligations of Coha...