While the Government might initially have envisaged the referendum on “gender equality” as a soft focus feel-good opportunity to bolster their fortunes among the bien pensant community, the implications of the proposals appear to throw up seemingly unintended possible consequences.
A discussion on Virgin TV’s Tonight programme on the day that the date was set for the referendum to be held on March 8 touched on two of these in particular.
Alison O’Connor of the Irish Examiner expressed the hope that “the right” would not succeed in “weaponizing” transgender issues.
But of course if the Constitution is proposed to be amended to remove any reference to women, then the question as to how the brave new concept of family and the replacement of the millennia old western definition by a new formula, one that includes “durable relationships,” is bound to touch on issues to do with the definition of gender.
That, after all, is the entire point of the exercise; to remove allegedly restrictive and even oppressive constitutional definitions of family in which the woman is recognised as the central carer.
This potentially opens up all sorts of new possibilities for those intent not on protecting women, but in imposing a completely subjective redefinition of all matters to do with gender, children and family, however defined.
Sinn Féin’s Louise O’Reilly echoed O’Connor in referencing the apparent anachronistic confinement of women to the home found in Article 41.2 as an ongoing attempt – by who one wonders – to “keep me in my place.” That is rather a tenuous position given that the said Article does no such thing. No woman is prevented from working or doing any other thing because of this article or any other of Bunreacht an hÉireann.
Indeed, some of the more economistic of the Old Left might have argued that removing what is clearly meant to be a right, is just another stage in accomplishing what Marx himself once described as the destruction of all social and family bonds that stood in the way of expanding the workforce.
I do not think that any woman has ever done so, but Article 41.2 does theoretically form the basis for women with children to argue that they not be required to work outside of the home. There is no such proposed legal mandate, of course, that would do so, but it is certainly the case for the majority of people now that a single income is not sufficient to sustain a home and children.
That was not always the case: even for most working class people who could also, in those dark days of Catholic obscurantism, have a reasonable expectation that if they worked, and paid their bills and so on, that they might come to own their own family home. It is rather ironic perhaps how much of the bucket list of the contemporary Left happens to coincide with the interests of capital seeking new means of expanding its potential workforce.
Another unforeseen consequence of the constitutional redefinition of what was once considered the family model, is that the reference to “durable relationships” will lead to a significant increase in the numbers of people living in the state who will apply for other people who they know to come to Ireland.
If the constitution is changed they will be able to do so on the basis of a relationship that has up to now had to be proven by a direct and indeed legal connection to the partners or children or parents of children seeking residency here.
According to a report in Monday’s Irish Independent, officials have informed the Government that “the amendment will give rise to an increase in the number of persons asserting family relationships.”
Presumably mindful of all of this, the officials also take the view that the Irish state would not be obliged to accept any such applications based on any updated constitutional definition.
Well, as anyone familiar with the asylum and migration system in the state will be only too aware, you can be certain that not only will there be increased numbers of applications, but that there will be lots of NGOs and legal eagles only too happy to support such claims, with all of the consequences which that will have on an already overburdened and cumbersome process.
It will be interesting to see to what extent this issue does impact on the referendum campaign. It can be recalled of course that the main reason for the overwhelming 80% majority to change the constitutional references to citizenship was that people were aware of how the situation that pertained prior to 2004 was being abused.
It is not, I imagine something that the political establishment in Government and on the opposition benches will wish to see become a central focus in the debate.