Reading between the lines is it safe to say that the Greens have little or no influence in this process?

Also that the groups that have been set up to fight for equality are not focussed on the specifics of the new law? Why is Marriage equality being launched when the government have said that this is not going to happen and are doing something else?

As you know MP, I am still smarting from how badly handled the whole issue was when the Green Party seemed to jettison ‘gay marriage’ in order to cosy up with the ‘soldiers of density’.
While I don’t really care whether we call it ‘marriage’ or call it ‘Fred’, I can admit that I felt dumped for the first time in my life. Around that time, on Roderic O’Gorman’s blog, several commentators tried to point out that we seemed to have been dumped in the name of power. Thus, the issue of trust is crucial to me – and I am not alone in that respect. I would like to trust that the legislators have the nerve to just get on with it at this stage!

What still troubles me is that the Green Party, which professes to want to champion this issue, appears to have a naïve view of the complexity of lesbian and gay culture. If this is not an accurate view of the Greens, then it is solely based on my reading of what they have stated. Rather than a naïve view of complexity, the position should be of adopting a simple solution that is also flexible and workable. The Greens are not alone in this, but they held the meeting… so welcome to Govt again!

It seems to me that the naivety has emerged in two contradictory ways. Firstly, gender has suffered in the name of political expediency. When the Labour Party’s Civil Unions Bill was presented, Ciaran Cuffe (on http://www.greenparty.ie 20 November 2007) argued “the Green Party would like to see legislation that would go further and permit the removal of all gender specific terms from current legislation and regulations governing the granting of marriages”. Maman Poulet: your call to gender-proof policies does actually bring the GP up sharp on this.

Your analysis also raises a second point: political expediency has left us with real dilemmas about “who” this legislation is for and what sort of legislation is required for “them”. A whole load of discourses at play here, from ‘gays don’t want marriage’ to elderly sisters seeking recognition can make legislating for Civil Unions like a foggy day at Dublin Airport. The complexity is made into something that veers upon an intractable problem. When MP notes how numerous issues were not known or not anticipated was evocative of Rumsfeld’s infamous ‘known-knowns’ speech. It made me concerned that the Greens were still being thrown off course by unanticipated issues. Likewise, calling now for people to lobby TD’s is also another dimension of muddying the waters, when this issue is quite clear and quite simple. Politicians who are worth their salt in 2008 should appreciate the myriad of living arrangements and relationship in contemporary Ireland and have the good sense to legislate for equality and human rights.

Are we suggesting they actually know nothing about lesbians and gay men? From their own lived experience (of whatever calibre), surely they should appreciate that effective legislation needs to reflect contemporary family life as a universal. Thus, Same-Sex Civil Union legislation needs to recognise contingency and complexity but also acknowledge the simplicity of the Irish fairy story: two queers meet, fall in love, want a partnership to live happily ever. Maybe they live together in poverty for 20 years or maybe they split up, fighting over custody of cats and soft furnishings. The modalities are not as important as a flexible approach: the legislation has to balance the love story and the contingency. But the crucial bit is to have legislative recognition for our lives as couples, based on who we – that is – WE want to name as our family of choice. The State does not need to interfere beyond that; the State needs to allow “us” to recognise and validate who “we” want, and to support our choice(s) and our families under the law. What part of this mandate isn’t clear to them after literally years of lobbying, media discourses, TV programmes and documentaries? Are we that much of a mystery?

So was this meeting any more than a re-launch of the promise to produce the Heads of a Bill? Have we evolved yet?