One thing that the “YES” campaign is unambiguously correct about in its campaign to change the definition of the family in the Irish constitution is that the constitution, at present, does not explicitly recognise all the potential forms that a family might take. Take, for example, the tragic situation where a child is raised by its grandparents because both parents died in an accident – that family is not explicitly recognised in Bunreacht nah Eireann, nor is one where an elder adult child is left to look after their parents surviving children should the parents no longer be around. It is also true, as the Supreme Court recently recognised, that unmarried couples with children do not have the same legal protections as married couples, especially in the event that one partner dies.
But here’s a question we just don’t ask nearly enough: So what?
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