IF gays and lesbians are to be given the same rights as married couples, then why not other couples as well?This is the question the Labour Party must answer.
So must all others who want to create gay marriage or its functional equivalent.
The question is especially urgent for Labour because this week it reintroduced into the Dail the gay civil partnerships Bill it first put before the House last February.
For those who support the rights of gays and lesbians to marry, or enter civil partnerships that are marriage in all but name, the issue is very straightforward. It is all about non-discrimination and treating people equally.
But the Labour Party needs to seriously consider the case of the Burden sisters which is currently before the European Court of Human Rights.
If it doesn't, it will have no credibility whatever on this issue.
Joyce and Sybil Burden live in England. They are in their 80s and have lived together as spinsters for all of their lives. When one dies, the survivor is going to have to sell the home they have shared for decades because the remaining sister won't be able to pay the inheritance tax.
The Burdens wonder why a lesbian couple in a similar circumstance won't have to do this. It's an excellent point.
Like the lesbian couple, the Burdens are a couple.
Like the lesbian couple, the Burdens are both women.
Like the lesbian couple, the Burdens are in a loving, committed relationship.
What's the difference, therefore?
What's the justification for imposing inheritance tax on one loving committed relationship and not the other?
The only real difference between the Burdens and the lesbian couple is that the relationship between the Burdens is not sexual and the relationship between the lesbian couple is.
This is the one and only thing that really separates the two couples and the British government obviously thinks that sex is so vastly important that one of the Burdens will have to sell their long-time family home when the other dies and the lesbian couple won't.
The Irish Labour Party, if it was clever enough, might concede that the only real difference between the Burdens and the lesbian couple is indeed that one relationship is sexual and the other isn't.
But it could then point out that this is also the only real difference between the Burdens and a married couple.
In pointing this out they would be forcing people who are pro-traditional marriage, rather than themselves, to explain what is so important about sex, that sexual relationships get all sorts of public benefits that other forms of relationships don't get.
Very well then, let's answer it.
Let's make it as clear as possible.
The reason married couples receive certain benefits from society has nothing to do with sex per se.
The liberals are right, neither the State nor society has any compelling interest in the sexual relationships of its citizens, assuming those relationships are consensual and not harming anyone.
It's not the fact that a married couple is having sex that interests the State.
It's what the sex generally produces that interests the State, namely children.
This is what separates a married couple from a gay or lesbian couple, or from the Burdens.
The gay couple, the lesbian couple and the Burden sisters cannot have children together unless they adopt or avail of IVF and neither of these things involves sexual intercourse.
(Incidentally, if we think two lesbians should be able to adopt or use IVF, then why not two sisters or two brothers?)
Labour and all other advocates of same-sex marriage/civil unions have completely lost sight of the fact that marriage is not really about recognising an adult relationship at all.
As a social institution, it is primarily about children.
The reason a married couple is exempted from inheritance tax has to do with children.
The reason they can share their tax allowances has to do with children.
The reason one can inherit the pension of the other has to do with children.
These benefits exist so that one or other spouse, usually the wife in practise, can give up work for some part of her career to stay at home and raise the children and not have to worry unduly about her pension or what will happen to the house when her husband dies.
Take children out of the equation and there is little public justification for attaching the benefits of marriage to anyone at all.
There is, mind you, a justification for giving some of the benefits of marriage to couples, whether in conjugal relationships or not, but there is no justification for creating the functional equivalent of marriage for anyone other than married, heterosexual couples.
Labour thinks the issue is equality.
It's not.
The issue is children and the fact that marriage is publicly supported not for the sake of the adults, but because it is the most pro-child of social institutions.
Unfortunately, this central public purpose of marriage has been obscured by a thick fog of 'rights talk' and dim-witted political correctness.
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