Hundreds of gay rights proponents are expected to attend a march to press for equal rights for gay families in Dublin today.
The Civil Partnership Act was officially introduced in the country in January but activists believe the union doesn’t go far enough to recognise rights for partners, particularly when it comes to having children. Under the current law, if one parent in a same-sex family dies, the other parent has limited care rights for the child.
Singer Brian Kennedy, a firm gay rights advocate, will attend the peaceful rally at Dublin’s City Hall today. The onetime Eurovision contestant said, as reported by Herald Ireland: “It [civil partnership] is a step in the right direction, it’s the first rung on the ladder but there are still another 150 rungs to go before we get to equality in marriage.”
He added: “I could go to any other country in Europe and get married, but I can’t here.
“It’s either a family or it’s not - that strikes me as the greatest issue of inequality,” he said.
Max Krzyzanowski, from gay rights group LGBT Noise told the Herald: “This is nothing short of State-endorsed discrimination in having separate laws for one section of society.”
Sixty-one percent of the Irish support legalisation of same-sex marriage, according to an Irish Independent/Millward Brown Lansdowne survey released in March.