I've been fairly certain from the outset about how I'll vote in the upcoming Marriage Referendum.
Put simply, in the absence of a coherent reason to vote No, I had decided to vote Yes.
There is a sustained campaign from the No side to suggest that children will be the innocent victims of a successful Yes vote. Children who will be raised without a mother's love if gay men are allowed to marry.
There are a couple of immediate issues I can see with this reasoning
- gay men are already 'allowed' to raise children, and the referendum will not change that, no matter the result
- also, are the children of lesbian couples therefore utterly blessed to have TWO of these amazing creatures, mothers, to raise them?
As a mother, I couldn't help thinking about my own children and really tried to see what the harm to them might be if I was not their mother.
I spent the weekend watching my husband with our kids. What is it about him that could make him so deficient he can only parent if I am here to mask his shortcomings?
Certainly, I have him beaten hands down when it comes to giving birth and breastfeeding. But with our soaring Caesarean section rates, and notoriously low breastfeeding rates, can we really say that either natural birth or nourishment are intrinsic to parenting in Irish society? I don't think so. Birth and provision of food do not make a mother, so they are certainly not flaws in a father.
My husband prepares meals for his kids. He reads to them, admires their paintings, puts Factor 50 on every piece of exposed skin.
When they are hurt, they find only tenderness in his muscular, tattooed arms. When they are frightened, he vows to kick the butt of any zombie he sees.
He cheers them on, and punishes them. He coaches football, removes tangles from hair without any tears and paints small fingernails in a dazzling array of colours.
It is simply not his gender that makes him a parent. His personality, his capacity for love, his sheer enjoyment in watching these quirky creatures growing up before our eyes, those are the things that make him 'Daddy'. He is a safe place to run to, a fun person to run with and he is so much more than a Y chromosome.
It is not only mothers who pace floors singing lullabies, who worry beside hospital beds and who deserve respect as parents. Apart from the lactating (and he's really quite stubborn about that) there is literally nothing that I would or could do for our children that he cannot do equally well.
There is no such thing as an ideal family. There are just people, getting on with it, trying to fit in enough cuddles around the working day and figure out where all the clean socks keep disappearing to. Children thrive on love, both observed and received. When children are wanted, cared for and nurtured, it matters not a jot whether their parents are male or female, only that they are there.
I still have yet to hear a valid reason to vote No.
I will be voting for equal marriage rights, for equal groups of people. I hope that this will result in many happy marriages, in happy, loving families and maybe, just maybe, in a generation more open-minded and tolerant than those who have gone before.
